When Ties Are Tested
by LillyMayFlower
Summary: Lily's loyalties are torn: whose side should she take when Ethan blames Dylan for Cal's death and is furious with his lies, but Dylan's mental health takes a hit in the aftermath of Cal's murder? A follow-up to 'The Power of Love' and 'Demons'. I do not own Casualty or any of the characters.
1. Chapter 1

**Hello again! I haven't written much fic for ages, because I haven't had any ideas I thought I could run with. But I'm back, with (hopefully) a decent idea in tow! This story is a full-length third part to the duology that was _The Power of Love_ and _Demons,_ where I'm going to explore the fallout of Cal's murder for Lily, Ethan and Dylan. **

**If you haven't read the other two, I'm not particularly good at brief summaries but I'll try, in order to get you up to speed. Lily and Ethan are a couple, and in the first story, an accident when they were both on a trauma call led to Lily's left foot being amputated. Dylan was the third doctor called when things went wrong, and his guilt (essentially it should have been him on the trauma team and not Lily) led to a battle with anxiety in my second story (along similar lines to his struggle with OCD in the show. Coincidence brought Lily and Dylan together when he was ina dark place, and they became very close friends. I think that just about summarises the story so far; I really hope this story is as well received as those two were!**

 **Please leave me a review and let me know what you think of this chapter :D (oh, and a quick apology to theverystuffoflife - my amazing sounding board, beta and best online friend - because you'll probably recognise most of this chapter!)**

Even before she opened her eyes, the first thing that Lily was aware of was a constant beeping sound. Monitoring equipment. Gaining consciousness gradually, she realised it had to be hers: the beeps seemed to match with the blood rushing in her ears. Next, her awareness settled on pain, just about everywhere, and then on the fact that she wasn't alone. This was reassuring – she knew that when she eventually opened her eyes she would have to experience a lot more pain than she was currently, not to mention that she would have to try and piece together what had happened to her. Fragments of memories were surfacing, but it didn't make much sense.

She was lucky; the lights had been turned down so she wasn't greeted by harsh fluorescent bulbs.

"Ouch," she said groggily, her eyes coming into focus to see Dylan sitting next to the bed. His elbows were rested tensely on his knees, his lips just touching his knuckles. He looked uneasy, anxious perhaps. Where was Ethan? Lily was immediately a little concerned, but soothed herself with the thought that Ethan was probably lending a hand in resus: she wouldn't want him to not help a patient on her account, and he knew this.  
"I think 'ouch' might be a bit of an understatement," Dylan replied calmly. "I can up your morphine, if you need it."  
"Please." She let out a tense breath as the mild sensation of the drug rippled through her bruised body. "What time is it?" She knew that it was better for her to remember what had brought her here, rather than have anyone tell her. She tried to gather a few memories together, none of them very pleasant, as Dylan checked his watch.  
"Ten to twelve. Midnight," he added as an afterthought. Taking the accident into account, context clues were probably quite useful to her. "It's still Saturday, just."  
Lily couldn't be certain, what with still feeling a little sleepy, but Dylan might have been stumbling over his words due to more than tiredness. And was that blood, tainting the cotton of his white shirt?  
"Where's Ethan?" If it was nearly midnight, her accident – the car impact, she could remember that much – was hours ago. Hadn't she left the E.D originally at about seven thirty? Wait – Ethan hadn't been involved too, had he? "I can't remember, I can't remember! I shouldn't have asked for that morphine so soon, I can't even think straight!" Lily tried to sit up; in her haste and worry, she didn't stop to think about the pain this would cause. It felt like every muscle in her body was on fire, although the flames were somewhat dulled by the painkillers in her system. Flopping back on her pillow in defeat only seemed to exacerbate everything. She tried to breathe through the pain but there was no escape. She screwed her eyes shut and even her face protested with discomfort. "I wish you would just put me back under," she said hoarsely, her jaw set.  
"You know I wouldn't do that," Dylan said. Lily concentrated on his voice, and then she felt his hand on her forearm. She focused on that, a beacon of stability. "How about don't try and do that again, for a little while at least? You're going to be all right, but just – just take care, okay?"

Lily hummed in agreement. She took a breath, testing the water. It was uncomfortable but tolerable. "What about Will, and Lizzie? Please tell me they're both okay!" Her breath hitched in her throat; she couldn't place her children in her sketchy memory of what had happened. Will, now four and a half, and Lizzie, who was almost a year old, had spent the day with their father while Lily had been at work, and she dreaded to think that her mind might have blocked out any thought of them coming to any harm.  
"They're absolutely fine. They came in with Ethan when you were admitted, none of them was involved in your accident at all."  
"I was hit by a car, is that right?" She looked up at the blank ceiling, relieved at least that her family was all right. "Was it Gem? She's not in any trouble, is she? It was an accident, I only wanted to help her." It was a snowball effect: one thought tumbled into the next, and the next.  
"Don't – try not to panic." Dylan altered his choice of words because he knew how much they mattered. "It was Gemma, yes. She – um – she made Iain take her to the police station. She wanted to hand herself in, I believe, once she'd been patched her up herself."  
Lily lifted her left arm painfully, to cover her mouth with her hand. "Oh my," she whispered. "Was she okay?"  
"Superficial injuries, really, and the airbag irritated her eye rather a lot. It was you we were all worried about. Please try and break the habit of ending up in resus, I don't want to have to watch you arrest, ever again. I don't imagine Ethan was particularly happy either. Three broken ribs and a cracked sternum. You narrowly avoided a collarbone fracture, bruised your neck and back, although they were cleared at the scene, and your face isn't looking quite as it should."  
If it wasn't so late, and she wasn't so tired, and she wasn't so shocked that she'd arrested in resus, Lily might have found Dylan's frank assessment of her face mildly entertaining. She tried her right arm – it wasn't as sore as her left – and clumsily tried to feel her face to assess the damage for herself. Immediately, Dylan pulled her hands away.  
"Don't. Don't try and guess. You're bruised all up the right-hand side, and you need a second x-ray on that eye socket."  
"Do you think it's broken?" Lily asked, frowning a little.  
"I – I haven't read your notes – I don't know."

Lily couldn't shake the feeling in her stomach that something wasn't right with Dylan. She could hear the anxiety in his voice. There was something that he was keeping from her. "Will you check my eyes?" She didn't want to wait until morning to find out the fate of her possibly-broken eye socket, but this wasn't the reason she was asking him. She trusted his judgement implicitly, tired or not, but there was still a more important reason. This small act of deception might allow her to gauge (in part) what was going on in his head. When he nodded in agreement, Lily watched his hands intently. She saw them quiver as he checked her vision, and she wished she could change his thoughts. Using his thumbs, he silently felt around Lily's right eyes. This focus was also part of her plan – to try and get him thinking about something else. She winced as one of his thumbs brushed against a tender spot at the corner of her eye.  
"Sorry."  
"Don't be, it's fine. Verdict?"  
He sat back in the chair, putting his hands together and intertwining his fingers. His attempt not to fidget was largely unsuccessful. "I would say that it's most likely not broken. But I feel obligated to remind you not to trust me, as I've been awake for about nineteen hours."  
"And I am equally obligated to remind you that I trust you anyway." There was a moment's pause. "Give me a number?" Lily knew he was keeping his anxiety level a secret from her, which was why she had to revert to what they used to do. They hadn't done numbers in ages, but things were not as they should have been.  
"Seven."

Lily hoped that her being a patient, rather than a colleague, didn't have anything to do with this. She hated the fact that in all likelihood, it was. She wanted to ask what was going on, but the morphine was snaking tendrils around her senses, and she couldn't think of a way to put it kindly. "Help me sit up, please," she said, instead.  
At first, she didn't know why he was being so careful, helping her into a more upright position as if she was a doll. It wasn't until she became aware of the sting of road rash, as her skin rubbed against her pyjamas, that she was grateful for it. So many nerve endings exposed, this was a kind of rawness that painkillers couldn't do much about.  
"What happened to my prosthetic?" she asked, the thought suddenly striking her that she wasn't wearing it, and she hadn't seen it in the room. Dylan leant down and picked it up from the floor. It was in a sorry state: skidding across tarmac was no better for plastic and metal than it was for skin. "Probably the only time in my life I was better off with only one foot, if this road rash is anything to judge by." As he set the damaged foot back on the floor, Lily got a decent look at his shirt. There was no denying it. It was stained stickily with blood, not just on the front but around the edges of his rolled-up sleeves too. "Dylan?"  
He raised one eyebrow to show he was listening.  
She fiddled with her wedding band, rotating it slightly on her finger. "That's not… that's not my blood, on your shirt, is it?"  
He breathed out through his nose. "It's not yours, no."  
A barrage of thoughts rushed to the front of Lily's mind. Dylan was wearing someone's blood and Ethan wasn't here. She truly could not remember whether he had been involved in the accident or not, but if he hadn't been, surely he would have at least looked in to see if she was okay by now? Dylan could easily have lied when he said that Ethan was unhurt.

"Dylan, where is Ethan?" There was no levity in her voice at all – she could feel her heartbeat heavy in her chest and she knew it would not slow down until she knew what was happening. Her face suddenly dropped in fear. "Is that Ethan's blood on your shirt?" Dylan didn't answer for a moment. He bit his lip, and Lily felt sick. "Dylan!"  
"It's Cal's blood, Lily. Ethan's downstairs in the E.D, I didn't know how to tell you. The thing is, he's – Cal's… he's dead."  
Lily's stomach clenched so tightly that for a moment she thought she really would be sick. This wasn't happening, it simply could not be true. She couldn't believe it, and she didn't want to. But she had to. Dylan wouldn't lie, not about something like this. She knew she should be upset, but she couldn't feel anything at all, not even the pain that had been driving her to distraction a few moments ago. Numb, she wished she could have a rush of emotion just to remind her that she was alive. Ethan had lost his brother, and she hadn't been there for him.  
"When?" she asked, her voice quivering as at last her feelings began to filter through.  
Dylan looked down at his hands. "About an hour ago. I was going home – I should have really gone home earlier than that, but then you were brought in, and there was some dreadful business with the Ellissons."  
"What happened?" A tear escaped from her right eye and slid down her bruised face.  
He sighed. "Um, we don't know, exactly. He was stabbed. By the time I found him he was nearly gone, but we got him into resus and we did everything we could –"  
"That goes without saying, don't try and think of things you should have done. Stab wounds are unpredictable at best, the internal bleeding can be massive and you'd just never know." This wasn't new information to either of them, but it had to be said. He needed that reminder. "Stupid question, but are you all right?" She knew that this would be traumatic for anyone, coming across a colleague like that, but Dylan wasn't just anyone.  
"It doesn't matter."  
"It does," Lily persisted. This was where that 'seven' had come from.  
"No, it doesn't, because I did everything I could and _he still died_. Internal heart massage, the works, I had him opened up in resus when he'd already been through enough – " Dylan pulled himself up short, frowning and shaking his head. "No, you don't need to hear that, not now." His expression slipped a little from his neutral mask, allowing Lily to see a little of how he was feeling. He was so deeply upset by his perceived failure that if Lily had been able, she would have been up out of the bed and giving him a hug. They didn't have that kind of friendship, they didn't do touchy-feely, but this was different.

"You did everything you could, you said it yourself. Cal –" Her voice trembled a little as she struggled to say his name. "He would not have asked for more than that, and neither would anyone else in this building." Lily could tell that although Dylan was nodding, he didn't agree with her. He wouldn't meet her gaze. "This is bound to be difficult, anyone would find it hard to deal with, but… you being you, and… I know how bad it could get, if you let it…" She wasn't doing a very good job of getting the words out that she wanted to. She was referencing Dylan's mental health: the anxiety that had been crushing after he believed he'd made mistakes with her care, the day she lost her left foot, and with the care of a patient who had died on his watch shortly afterwards.  
"I'm fine," he insisted.  
"You're just saying that because you don't want to worry me. I won't sit here and watch you beat the living daylights out of yourself, for something that was out of your control!" She had started softly, but her voice was rising with conviction. "Don't let history repeat itself!"  
She hadn't intended to be so sharp; she half expected him to look hurt. But instead, he nodded in concession. "I'll try."  
A few minutes later, out of the blue, Lily's eyes filled with hope. "I need your help," she said lightly. Her expression made Dylan reluctant to put a stopper in her plan, but he really had to.  
"I can't, no way."  
"I haven't even told you what I was thinking, yet!"  
Dylan rubbed the back of his neck, feeling the pressure of the evening's events weighing on him heavily. "I don't have to, I know you: you want me to help you get down to the E.D. In the state you're in, I won't risk moving you. It hurt you enough just to sit up, I don't want to hurt you more."  
"But Cal… My brother-in-law has been…" She paused. 'Murder' was such an ugly word, even worse when it had to be spoken aloud. "Cal's been murdered, Ethan needs me."  
"Not like this, he doesn't." Although the primary reason for not wanting to move Lily had already been admitted, Dylan couldn't deny that he didn't want to face Ethan right now. It was easy to take on the role of concerned friend and use this as a cover for his own cowardice, as much as he truly did care about Lily, especially in her emotionally and physically vulnerable current state. "Ethan watched you nearly die, this evening, so I don't think he really wants to see you set back your recovery, just on his account." That was probably too harsh, but Dylan didn't care. There was a tight knot of nerves forming in his stomach, threatening to erupt at any second, and he felt safe here, away from the E.D., where it had all gone wrong, again.

The sting of Lily's skin against her sheets was a reminder that this hadn't been her best idea: she was defeated. It hadn't really been fair to drag Dylan into her escape plan, not when he was feeling fragile like this. "Am I allowed to go back to sleep, then? Tired," she mumbled, embarrassed.  
"Allowed?" Dylan almost laughed, despite his deep-seated malaise. "You're a patient, not a child!"  
Lily might have been disappointed that Dylan hadn't consented to help her get down to the E.D., but she wasn't refusing to play a little with his sarcastic streak. "You know exactly what I meant. Are you supposed to be keeping me awake? Did I hit my head?"  
"Well, yes, but not hard enough for us to be keeping strict tabs on you. If you're tired, sleep is probably the best thing you can do." He stood up in order to help her lie down and inhaled sharply when she winced in pain. He looked at her sympathetically before making a move towards the door. "Do you need any more pain relief, before I go?"  
She shook her head. "Will you –"  
"Send Ethan up, when he's ready?" He finished her question for her, and she allowed herself to relax more deeply, smiling a little. "Course I will, don't be daft. Now just try and get some sleep."

Dylan knew full well that Lily would be asleep before he'd even made it back to the E.D. Walking along the hospital's brightly lit corridors, he didn't notice that he'd begun subconsciously wringing his hands as he approached the problem of answering police questions about the sudden murder of Caleb Knight, and the bigger problem of looking Ethan in the eye, as the brother left behind. He tried to tell himself that it was just another shift, another patient, albeit one whom he should have been able to save. He tried to compartmentalise, move one, pretend it hadn't happened. Pretend that his lies weren't going to catch up with him sooner rather than later.


	2. Chapter 2

**This chapter took so long to write, sorry! Enjoy, and please leave me a review if you're that way inclined :D  
**

* * *

The next time Lily woke up, it was morning. Ethan had taken the chair beside her bed, but his watery eyes were outlined in red, staring into space, and his hair was messy from having his hands run through it. He was holding a cardboard cup of tea with both hands; his long fingers were wrapped all the way around the cup to link at the side furthest from him.

Lily cleared her throat, and her husband's focus came back to the present. "Did you manage to sleep at all?" she asked, knowing that there was so much more that she wanted to ask, and so much that she should be asking. He barely answered anyway, just shaking his head. She wriggled the fingers of her right hand, testing them (they were stiff but not really sore) before reaching out for Ethan to take her hand, which, thankfully, he did.

It took a few moments, but eventually Ethan managed to swallow the present wave of grief enough to speak, his voice hollow. "Trust you, Mrs Hardy, to be looking out for me first, when you're the one lying in a hospital bed." He rested his forehead on their entwined hands. Upon doing this, tears began to leak from his eyes again. As his shoulders shuddered, Lily stroked the back of his head, feeling his emotions bring out her own.

"It's alright," she said. "I'm here."

"It's not alright!" Ethan's words were muffled by his crying, but his meaning was clear. "It's not alright, my brother is gone and he's not coming back. It's not supposed to be like this!"

Lily looked up at the ceiling, although her neck protested with pain. "I know it's not, I'm sorry." She squeezed his hands, although the tension in her wrist made it throb. She didn't want to allow herself to cry. Not least because she needed to be strong for her husband, but she strongly suspected that it would probably hurt an awful lot to cry.

It took a long time for Ethan to feel as though he had cried enough to start feeling better. His head pounding from extended sobbing, he finally crawled into the hospital bed beside Lily. He took the greatest care not to disturb her injuries, although it would have been easy to forget them all and pretend it was just another day. It would have been easy to curl against her and use her as a protective barrier against the world. But today was not just another day. He was grieving, but he had to be strong for his recovering wife and for his children. It was thinking of them which pulled him out of his own head.

"If you're feeling up to it," he said quietly into Lily's shoulder, "then I can bring Will and Lizzie up. I know Lizzie's too little to understand, but Will was a bit upset last night when you were brought in – I didn't explain all of this to him, but he was worried about you when I said you'd had to come to hospital as a patient, not for work." He slipped an arm across her in a gentle hug, and felt her whole body tense. Quickly, he let go. "Everything okay? I didn't hurt you, did I?"

"No, you didn't, don't worry. I'm fine, just – where have they been all night? None of this should have happened; I shouldn't have gone after Gem and Cal should still be alive. And we should have had a normal night." She closed her eyes for a moment, frowning.

"I know, I know," Ethan said, replacing his arm across his wife to gently hold her close. If had been any other night, he would have been able to say something kind to make Lily feel better. But everything was so dark right now, nothing had gone right and it hadn't been a normal night. "You don't have to worry about Will and Lizzie, they're just fine, okay? They fell asleep before…" Ethan pinched the bridge of his nose. "Before Cal was even brought in. Charlie and Duffy were looking after them, in Charlie's office I think."

* * *

Ethan felt like every person he passed, on his way down to the E.D, turned to look at him with a mix of sympathy and sadness. He knew Cal had been popular (he always had been, even in school) but it took him by surprise, just how many people had tears in their eyes as he walked by them. He supposed they were trying to show some solidarity, show him that his brother had been loved widely throughout the hospital, but it only made him feel more alone. Which was ridiculous: he had Lily and he had his children, but it still didn't sit well with him that he was the last of his family left on earth. His adoptive mother, his real mother, and now Cal, all gone.

It was Fletch's hand on his shoulder which broke through the wall of silent grief.

"I won't ask you if you're alright, mate," he said, looking at Ethan's stunned expression.

"Thanks, I think," Ethan replied. He rubbed his eyes, sore from hours of openness.

"Look, I'm sorry about Cal, I really am. Top bloke." Fletch paused, rubbing his fingertips first across his lips and then across the back of his neck. "If there's anything I can do for you, or Lily, you let me know, okay?"

Ethan looked down at the floor, blinking hard before speaking. "Just… just make time go backwards, Fletch, make it all different. Because tonight shouldn't have been like this, not a single bit of it." He slouched, allowing his shoulders to round themselves as though they were a shield. "If you can't do that for us, then there's nothing. We don't need anything more than that."

Fletch didn't allow himself to be hurt by Ethan's hard words, no matter how unlike his normal demeanour they were. It was easier to push people away when you were grieving, he knew, easier than trying to explain what it felt like.

"You know where we are, Ethan, yeah? If anything at all comes to mind."

There wasn't anything to be said that would take away how awful Ethan felt, Fletch knew. He wouldn't be interested in hearing someone else tell him that the crushing sensation of loss would not last forever. The doctor didn't want to hear that it would get easier, that one day he might forget the pain so that the only things remaining would be memories of happy times shared with his brother.

* * *

Dylan was the first member of the E.D team that Ethan saw when he finally got downstairs.

"How are you still here?" Ethan asked, looking at Dylan's tired face to avoid looking at his blood-stained shirt. "You really need to go home and get some rest."

"I had to wait and talk to the police, and sort some paperwork, so it didn't seem worth going home, just to be called back here at the drop of a hat." Dylan's voice was tired, but this didn't mask his empty tone.

"You… you had to speak to the police? Were you with him – did you find Cal, out there?" Ethan felt his hands start to shake, and he stepped backwards into the wall. He supposed this was a good thing: he might have tripped or just collapsed instead.

Dylan nodded sadly, unable to meet Ethan's eyes. "I did, I should have come and found you earlier. I treated him as best I could in here, but I found him outside, unconscious. He was virtually unresponsive from the start, I'm sorry."

Ethan pinched the bridge of his nose. "It's not alright, I can't say that it is."

"No, I know that."

"But I'm glad it was you, thank you for being with him, until the end."

Dylan's heart rate picked up in his chest as his lie caused a spike in his anxiety level. Why was he doing this? Why couldn't he just tell Ethan the truth?

* * *

Will sprang up from where was sitting when he saw his father at the door of Charlie's office. Ethan knelt on the floor to hug him as he came running across the small room.

"Have you been causing trouble, young man?" he asked wearily, looking over Will's shoulder to Duffy, who was giving Lizzie a bottle. Ethan felt his son's head shake swiftly.

"No, Daddy! Charlie read us a story, even though Lizzie wasn't listening, and I went to sleep, only a bit after her."

Ethan mouthed a silent 'thank you' to Duffy, who nodded slightly. He was very grateful that she asked how Lily was doing, rather than how Ethan himself was holding up, because he didn't know how he would have answered her. He concentrated on showing his gratitude to both Charlie and Duffy, and then on keeping an eye on Will as he carried Lizzie upstairs, so that he didn't have to think about himself.

As they got closer to Lily's room, he quickly stopped Will. "Now, remember what I said last night? Mummy will be okay, but we have to be very careful with her at the moment, okay? She's still going to be achy and sore for a little while."

Will nodded, although Ethan could tell there was something else on his mind. The look in his son's eyes told him that a tenuously linked comment would shortly follow. "Daddy, we should have flowers. People in hospital, you're supposed to bring flowers. And you bring flowers home all the time. They make Mummy happy."

And despite the dull ache of grief in his chest, Ethan couldn't help a small laugh escaping. "I think Mummy will forgive you not bringing her any flowers this morning, William. I have a sneaking suspicion that seeing you might be enough to cheer her up, all by yourself." He watched Will draw himself up proudly, having heard how pivotal his role was today.

Ethan wasn't wrong; a warm smile erupted from Lily's bruised face on seeing her husband return with her two children.

"Did you behave for Charlie and Duffy?" she asked Will, taking an identical approach to the one Ethan had, a few minutes before. Her son nodded as if she should have known this already.

"Are you okay?" he asked uncertainly, coming up to the side of the bed and looking at her with deep concentration.

Lily thought for a moment before answering. "I'm bruised, and some of my bones are broken so I'm very sore, but I will mend. I'll be fine." She said those last three words with great conviction so as to reassure him, but also to convince Ethan that she was more concerned for his wellbeing than for her own.

"Daddy, do you have your stethoscope?" Will asked, turning around.

Ethan reflexively went to pull it from around his neck, because it was always there when he was in the hospital under normal circumstances, before remembering. "I haven't, sorry. It's down in my locker, because I wasn't in work yesterday."

Lily watched her son's face fall in disappointment. She thought she knew his plan. "William, I was wearing my stethoscope last night before the accident, it should be in the bedside drawer. Try the top one."

When Will had retrieved his mum's stethoscope, Ethan lifted him so he was at the right height to listen to Lily's heartbeat, without leaning on any of her injuries. The little boy giggled as he listened intently to the rhythm.

"What's your diagnosis then, Dr Hardy?" Ethan asked him after setting him down so that he was seated on the side of the bed. "Does this lady have a heart?"

"Of course she does!" Will replied quickly, wearing a wide smile.

"I should hope someone might have noticed by now, if I didn't," Lily said. She saw Ethan's smile become rather fixed, and a rather unpleasant memory suddenly surfaced.

* * *

 _"That's your problem Lily, you're just heartless, you don't care about patients. It's just all about you," Cal said, not allowing Lily time to respond before he marched off to rejoin the strike._

 _Lily's breath caught in her throat. Cal wasn't voicing an unpopular opinion, in fact it was one shared by many this afternoon, but why couldn't anyone see that she wasn't joining the strike for her own gains in the department? She couldn't allow herself to walk away from the E.D, not when it had saved her life once before and she'd spent so long away from it, recovering. She was continuing to work to stop the whole department grinding to a halt. Sure, maybe this would prevent further cuts to staff, but it would also bring widespread press criticism, and how many lives might be risked in the process? She understood why so many people were striking, and she took their point, but there had to be a better way than to put a stop to the E.D's smooth running. She was refusing to strike because she cared about patients. She turned her back on it all and returned to work with red cheeks and watery eyes._

 _"That is enough, Caleb, leave Lily out of this," Ethan said. "There's no need to make an example out of her in order to prove to yourself that you're on the moral high ground. Because picking on people doesn't put you up there at all."_

* * *

The tension between the two brothers had been simmering and palpable for as long as Lily had known them both. She hated that its end had to come with the demise of Cal, because as much as Ethan sometimes hated his brother, and vice versa too, they had still always needed each other.

Lily wished that things were different.


	3. Chapter 3

Although her injuries remained more or less the same (the bruises under her skin took a few days to fully bloom but when they did, they were no less painful) Lily became more adept at dealing with them. She told herself, frequently, that this recovery was on a par with the accident which had taken her left foot several years prior. (It had also taken her appendix, but this wasn't something Lily considered particularly to be a loss. She didn't miss it.) Perhaps she was already well-adjusted to walking on her prosthetic, however she strongly suspected that the road rash under her knee and the bruising at her hip might prevent her from walking on it again any time soon. At least, she wouldn't be walking at the same time any other patient in a 'car vs pedestrian RTC' might be expected to. But she'd long since gotten used to the idea of doing things in her own time, doing them her own way.

What she hated more than anything, even though she was almost used to it, was having to modify the way in which she treated her husband and her children. Three days post-trauma, she remained unable to sit up unassisted. It was demeaning, returning to a state which made her feel like a child, and made her feel like her disability was taking over. Being unable to move without help meant she was unable to support Ethan in the way she wanted to, in his grieving the loss of his brother. She was limited to holding his hand, or hugging him only when he decided he needed it. Lily held her breath as he leaned down to hug her, and repressed little sounds of pain when he sat next to her on the hospital bed. She needed his proximity and didn't want to seem as though she was pushing him away, even though it felt like salt being poured into a wound every time the bed sheets shifted over her raw skin. She wanted to hold Lizzie close when she cried, because she could see that it was grating on Ethan a little to have to comfort her so much when he needed comfort himself. Her daughter's little cheeks were turning pink as more teeth sprouted from her gums, so her discomfort was visible as well as audible. But Lily couldn't twist to pick Lizzie up; she couldn't lift her daughter up out of Ethan's lap; and there was no way she could rest her daughter on her lap, not yet. It was torture – at least Lizzie didn't understand, but it upset Lily deeply to have to explain to Will that she couldn't give him a hug like normal.

Lily couldn't bear seeing Ethan fall apart in front of her, and being unable to do anything to fix it. She knew she couldn't heal the deep psychological gash of losing his brother so suddenly, and so horrifically, but she also knew that if she wasn't trapped in this bed, imprisoned by her injuries, she would be able to do much better at trying.

* * *

Ethan wasn't sleeping. Lily knew this much because shadows under his usually clear eyes were darkening. If she had been at home, she would have taken over looking after the children completely and wholeheartedly, allowing him time to recover from what was undoubtedly driving him to distraction. Perhaps the bereavement in itself wouldn't be affecting him so badly, if the news hadn't broken in the hospital that Scott Ellisson was walking the streets as a free man. There was apparently no proof, no evidence linking him to the hospital on the night of the murder, and no legitimate reason why he would have been near the hospital at all.

"He had a reason, alright," Ethan hissed through gritted teeth and tears, on the afternoon of the third day, having stumbled wearily into the chair beside the bed. Lizzie was in his arms, her car-seat on the floor at his feet. Will was still at pre-school, and privately Lily was very glad – she didn't want him to see his father like this.

"Ethan, don't say that, please," Lily urged.

"He did though, didn't he?" Ethan's tone was sharp, and so unlike him that the back of Lily's neck prickled uncomfortably. "If I'd done things differently, then Roy Ellisson would still be alive, and so would Cal. Scott was after me."

Lily's eyes filled with tears. She had to remind herself that this wasn't confirmed truth. She hated how likely it sounded, but she had to keep telling herself that it was false, or she'd find herself slipping into dark pits of worry and anxiety. Despite reaching the height of emotion, on noticing Lily's upset he immediately put Lizzie down into her car-seat. Wiping his eyes roughly with his sleeve, he sat delicately on the edge of the mattress.

"Tell me to get off, if I'm hurting you too much." With these words scarcely off his lips, Ethan tentatively slipped his arms around Lily. It did hurt, forcing tears from her eyes down onto her cheeks, but to be held in his arms and to feel safe was worth every moment. After a second's deliberation, she lifted her arms up to hug him back. Her shoulder protested but she didn't care. She cried softly into Ethan's shirt for a minute or two, relieved momentarily of the burden of the last few days.

"You have no idea how much I've needed that," she said weakly, when he'd returned to the chair.

Somehow, miraculously, she managed to convince him to leave Lizzie in her car-seat, up on the bedside cabinet, and to take himself down to the on-call room. It might only give him a couple of hours, before Will would need to be collected from pre-school, but it would be a couple of hours uninterrupted quiet. He might just manage to get some sleep.

* * *

If Connie was taken aback by Lily's appearance, when she made her way up to the registrar's room, she did a good job of hiding it.

Lily was not so successful at hiding her surprise– the light knock at the door was completely unexpected as her only visitors so far had been Ethan (who had not long since left) and Dylan (although she hadn't seen him since the first time he came.) She had been rocking the car-seat carefully as Lizzie dozed, but at the slight disturbance, her daughter was awake and tetchy. _Another light sleeper, like her father,_ Lily thought. She clasped her hands in front of her as Connie came into the room and found it a little tricky to meet the Clinical Lead's piercing gaze.

To give Connie her due, she was unusually genteel and not at all like her usual imposing self, once she was inside Lily's four walls.

"May I come in?" she asked while she was still at the door.

Lily was shocked, and unsure whether she had any choice aside from her meek reply: "of course," and a mildly uncomfortable gesture to the chair beside the bed.

"I wanted to come and see how you're doing," she said kindly. Secretly, Connie was mindful of Lily's isolation. Aside from Ethan and Dylan, she didn't particularly have friends in the department. Which was why she felt duty-bound to check in with the registrar: if no-one else was going to, then she certainly would make the effort to be kind. In this state which Lily found herself in, kindness was exactly what she needed. "I know it must be difficult for you and Ethan, with losing Cal, and I wanted to give you my sincerest condolences. It was a horrible, horrible thing to happen, and he was a good man."

"He was a better doctor." Lily felt her eyes become wet, and she was surprised when Connie pressed a tissue into her hand at once. She wiped her tears, and let out a strangled sort of laugh. "I always want to say, now, that he was a good man, and he was, but so often he wasn't. He was irritating, he was too quick with his words and he was always running late. And somehow we loved him anyways." Lily realised too late what she'd said, covering her mouth with her right hand, although a rogue sob escaped, and once one had come, the rest followed.

"Hey, hey, it's alright, Lily. It's okay," Connie said, moving closer to Lily's body. Her battered, fragile body was shaking as she cried, and it had to be hurting her. "It's okay, to say things about him that don't put him on a pedestal. Because he knew that he didn't belong on one." Her words were measured and deliberate as a result of her trying to calm Lily down. She spoke quietly but firmly, keeping up a brave façade for Lily's sake. Knowing what she did about the strength of Lily and Ethan's relationship, she highly doubted whether Lily had been allowing herself to grieve at all, while she was supporting Ethan.

After a few minutes, Lily found some composure, and characteristically apologised for having cried at all. "You didn't come up here in order to watch me get upset," she said quietly, looking down to her hands, which clasped the tissue she'd just wiped her eyes with.

"No," Connie said, in a tone which soothed Lily deeply. "I came up here to give you a little release. It's not easy trying to be the strong one all the time, especially not under these circumstances." She poured Lily a glass of water and sat patiently as she drank it. When Lily was finished, Connie gestured to Lizzie, who was still grizzling softly, and Lily hung her head. "It's okay, Lily, really. Can I hold her for you?"

Lily nodded, embarrassed as Connie deftly took her daughter into her arms, skilfully bouncing her a little on her lap until at last her grumpy frown dissolved into a smile.

"You've got stop mentally punishing yourself for what you perceive to be your shortcomings, but anyone around you can see as simply the consequences of your accident," Connie said, hoping that her words might get through to Lily. "Is there anything I can do to help you?"

Her request was so genuine that in her fragile state, Lily very nearly set a few more tears free. It seemed so peculiar to be asked by her boss, whether she could be helped in any way, that at first Lily was silent, stuck completely on what to say. At last, she admitted, "It's very kind of you, but I don't know."

Instead, Connie switched tack. "How have you been managing?"

"Me?" Lily looked confused. She wished she could say something intelligent. "Ethan doesn't know whether he's coming or going –"

"That's understandable," Connie cut in. "It's a dreadful situation you're both in. But that's not really what I asked, is it?"

Lily wrung her hands. "I know. I haven't given myself time to think about myself. I haven't _got_ time to think about myself."

Connie smiled sympathetically. "I've always found it so toxic, this idea that looking after yourself can't ever come first. Caring for yourself a little does not mean that you care less for those around you. You'd do well to remember that, Lily." She raised her eyebrows.

"But there's so much else that's more important at this time than me. Once the post-mortem is cleared and finished, there'll be the funeral, and Ethan will need me."

"And he will need you on the best form you can manage. You're still in recovery from major trauma."

Lily looked at Connie, smiling shyly. "In recovery from major trauma, and the worst thing I can presently think of is not having brushed my hair in days."

"Do you have a brush?"

"Oh – no – I didn't mean…" Lily bumbled.

But Connie was adamant. If that was the one thing she could do to help, then she would do it. She eased the tangles out slowly, before putting Lily's hair into a careful French plait. It was a small gesture, but Lily couldn't deny it was a kind one, one which really did make her feel better, even if it didn't alleviate the omnipresent pain almost everywhere in her body. It also loosened her tongue a little, allowing her to ask Connie to put Lizzie straight into her arms. The Clinical Lead's mothering streak did this at once: if Lily couldn't physically lift her daughter then surely it was killing her to not even have held her since the accident.

Along the same line, of loosening Lily's tongue, she was eventually brave enough to enquire about Dylan's well-being.

 _I should have expected this,_ Connie thought. _How do I tell her it's all going wrong?_ "He has been offered compassionate leave, but he won't take it." She watched Lily sigh, before going a little further. "If anything, he's working more hours, not fewer. Honestly, I think he's overworking himself."

Lily looked straight up at the ceiling, although it hurt her to do so. "That's how he copes – I mean, he thinks it's coping. He's probably overcompensating, as if he's trying to forgive himself for what happened, on his watch."

"But there's nothing he could have done!" Connie exclaimed. "I was there, there were others there too, and not one of us could have changed what happened!"

"Mrs Beauchamp, I know. And I think there's a part of him that knows it too. But he can't help himself – if his anxiety has got a hold of this, then…"

Connie somehow tuned out the end of what Lily was saying. The last time things had gone wrong with Dylan's mental health, Zoe had been there to pick up the pieces. But Zoe was three and a half thousand miles away now.


	4. Chapter 4

**Hi :) Thank you to everyone who has reviewed so far - let me know what you think of this chapter if you can, because I don't usually write scenes like this; it's been quite a challenge!**

It wasn't until a few hours had passed that Lily realised where Mr Beauchamp's conviction had come from, on the subject of 'being the strong one' in difficult situations. After the car accident which had hospitalised Grace, there had been no-one on her side to support her. In the aftermath, she had been obligated to remain strong for her daughter: no doubt there had come a point upon which it had dawned on her that to keep up the brave façade everyone was accustomed to, she also needed ensure that she herself was properly looked after.

* * *

The release of Lily's discharge papers, on the fifth afternoon post-trauma, was a source of great relief. To Lily, of course, and to Ethan as well, but also to most of the staff involved with her care. The eternal truth remained: doctors did not make good patients, especially not doctors who wanted nothing more than to be at home. It was a small concession to Connie, that Lily wanted to go home and was not yet talking about coming back to work.

It was a relief to Dylan too, that Lily would soon be out of the hospital. He couldn't shake the feeling of his mental health turning against him, allowing in unpleasant thoughts that were difficult to ignore. The statistics surrounding hospital-acquired infections had somehow burrowed themselves into his increasingly anxious mind and refused to budge. With the news that his friend would be going home came a lightness in his trains of thought.

A lightness that he hoped deeply would last.

* * *

Still unable to put her prosthetic on (Lily was impatient for this as much as she was impatient to pick up her children from the ground) Lily allowed Ethan to push her wheelchair to the car park.

Just outside the ward she'd been admitted to, he leaned down to speak to her. His breath tickled her ear. "I thought we could go down through… out our usual way. I mean, if you want to."

Lily should have suspected that something was up, just from the way Ethan's tone wasn't quite as miserable as it had been of late. As Ethan wheeled her smoothly down the corridor towards the ED, all seemed normal, except for a low hum in the air. Was it anticipation? Maybe secrecy? She couldn't tell. She noticed that as she and Ethan made their way through the department, people seemed to part like the Red Sea; her husband didn't have to stop to say 'excuse me' once, and on any other day it might have been impossible to push a wheelchair through without disruption.

Almost every member of staff pressed an envelope into her hands as she passed them. They seemed thicker than simple cards wishing her well, which Lily didn't understand. As they were about to leave, Lily remembered that there were a few things in her locker that she'd like to take home.

"Ethan? I know it's a pain, but could you possibly empty my locker for me? I don't think I'll need to leave anything here for a little while, hm?" She passed him the key, and when he was well on his way, she manoeuvred the wheelchair so she was a little more out of the way.

Connie came over immediately. "Home at last?"

Lily nodded. Looking down at the envelopes in her lap, she said, "I suddenly feel immensely popular. I don't know what changed around here –" She noticed Connie look away momentarily, but wasn't brave enough to come straight out and ask the Clinical Lead whether she had anything to do with it.

"Well.." Connie began, projecting her usual calm image while internally feeling more than a little stupid. "Some of the team were writing cards anyway, just wishing you well. I asked them, if they were going to write, to write two."

"Two?" Lily furrowed her eyebrows slightly.

"One to send their good wishes to you, and the second… I thought it might help Ethan, to know that Dr Knight was loved widely and deeply in this department."

Lily's eyes widened, and she had to blink hard. She didn't know what to say: it was incredibly moving that so many people had expressed their sympathies in this way. And perhaps it _would_ help Ethan, to remember good times rather than present heartbreak.

* * *

It wasn't supposed to be this easy to access documents marked 'strictly confidential.' And yet here Ethan was, holding and reading the post mortem report concerning Dr Caleb Knight. The paper seemed to burn his hands. He knew he shouldn't be reading it, but its forbidden-ness only made it more compelling. It was harrowing reading; Ethan's throat constricted as his brother's last living moments played like a film in his mind. He leaned back against the lockers, heart pounding. The line he had just read didn't align with what he'd been told. This couldn't be right. It just couldn't. Dylan wouldn't lie to him. Ethan checked the patient details at the top of the document – suddenly he had a terrible feeling that he was reading some other poor soul's post mortem report. This was such a violation of privacy. But there it was, in plain black, 12 point, Times New Roman lettering. _Dr Caleb Knight._

* * *

What was taking Ethan so long? Lily clumsily wheeled herself to the staff room door, in time to see the blood drain from her husband's face. A few sheets of thick white paper fluttered to the floor in front of him, having somehow escaped his fingers.

"Ethan, is – is everything alright?" Frustrated, she realised that there was no way she'd be getting through this doorway; she'd come at it at completely the wrong angle.

"No, I'm not – I – it's absolutely not okay." Colour was rising rapidly in Ethan's face. He made no effort to pick up the fallen sheets of paper, and Lily wished she knew what they were.

"We can sort this at home, let's just get out of here," she said gently. "This isn't a good place for either of us right now, let's just go home."

"No," Ethan said, fists balled at his sides. He walked powerfully across the staff room, and Lily moved backwards in order to get out of his path.

She was powerless to stop him – he was angrier than she'd ever seen him. Running on pure fury, Ethan appeared to have grown a few inches taller, and before anyone knew what was happening, he had pushed Dylan up against a wall. The consultant had been walking towards cubicles, and was understandably taken greatly by surprise.

"Ethan, stop!" Lily shouted. This was so unlike him, she didn't want to believe she was awake. Maybe all of this was fake, just a figment of her imagination, fuelled by the drugs she'd been given since the accident. And yet it wasn't fiction, it was all too real. Everyone was acting completely truly to themselves, except Ethan. Connie looked furious; Max was stifling a laugh; and Louise was hovering, as though this sudden moment of drama was the highlight of her shift.

"Ethan, w-w-what the hell are you doing?" In comparison to Ethan, who had grown with anger, Dylan seemed to have shrunken back in fear, like a wallflower.

"YOU LIED TO ME!" Ethan shouted, his voice almost a roar although the whole space had turned deathly silent, and he was only inches away from Dylan's face.

Lily wanted the ground to swallow her up. What was Ethan even talking about? She clenched her hands together, thinking that if she'd been wearing her prosthetic she would have been up there in the middle of it all already, pulling Ethan away. Why wasn't anyone doing anything? This wasn't a performance put on for their entertainment, this was apparently real. And it was none of anyone's business except Ethan's and Dylan's. For such a quiet person, Lily couldn't for the life of her understand why Ethan had decided that the best way to deal with this was to go so painfully public.

Ethan went on, not lowering his volume at all. It was as though he wanted everyone to know. Lily felt sick: this had to be about Cal, and Ethan was only so explosive because it was so recent and raw. "YOU TOLD ME THAT MY BROTHER WAS UNCONSCIOUS – YOU SAID HE WASN'T IN ANY PAIN! YOU LIAR!"

Lily felt as though the metaphorical rug had been pulled from under her. The paper Ethan had dropped, on the heavy, high-quality while paper – there was a reason she hadn't seen anything printed on that paper before. She wasn't supposed to see those documents, and neither was Ethan. He had somehow found access to Cal's post mortem. Something in it had got his back up so extremely that he'd flown off the handle and taken it out on Dylan. She supposed this was because Dylan had been the one to find Cal, he'd been in charge of his care once he'd been brought inside. But Dylan wasn't a liar: he was sarcastic, brash, mildly (or not so mildly) irritating very frequently. But he could be kind too, and one of his greatest attributes (even if it didn't always feel like it at the time of delivery) was his absolute honesty.

Iain launched through the quickly-assembled crowd, and Lily could have kissed the paramedic with the gratitude she felt to him for pulling Ethan away, because her husband was not calming down in the slightest and she had feared that he might do something he might truly regret. Despite it being out of character, she wouldn't have put it past Ethan to punch Dylan in the face, and then he could even face a disciplinary hearing for assault.

"Hey, hey, buddy, that's enough!" Iain said loudly, hauling Ethan backwards, away from Dylan, who remained leaning against the wall, his eyes unusually fearful.

Lily recognised that look in his eyes and her heart sank. She didn't want to believe that Ethan was the cause of it, either. She rolled forwards quickly and took Ethan's hand, nodding to Iain as a signal that they would be okay now.

The arrival of Lily's hand in his own momentarily broke through Ethan's blinkers of pure rage.

"Ethan, stop," she whispered, and when he looked down at her, her face was etched with worry. "Please."

He dropped her hand, and looked straight back to Dylan. "You lied to me," he repeated, no longer shouting but his tone still low and dangerous. "Why didn't you tell me the truth?"

Dylan hadn't moved from the wall, as though he was still pinned there. "How do you – what – how did you even find out?" His breath was coming irregularly and Lily dearly wanted to tell anyone still standing around that this wasn't fair, this wasn't a joke, they shouldn't be watching. It wasn't decent, for them all to be an audience to one of their colleagues being pulled apart.

"The post mortem, how do you think I found out‽"

"Dr Hardy," Connie said, stepping forward. "That is a confidential document. You shouldn't have gone looking for it, and you certainly shouldn't have read it. I could have you formally warned for theft of confidential information."

"Mrs Beauchamp, please," Lily begged. "Please, don't."

It was almost as if Ethan hadn't heard either of them. "Why did you lie to me?" he persisted.

Lily chose to overlook Dylan's partial admission to what he'd done. "Dylan, it's alright. Say it isn't true. Just say the post mortem got it wrong, some information slipped through somehow and the coroners were wrong. It's okay," she urged, knowing that if she asked Dylan for a number on their anxiety scale, it would be off the charts. "Ethan, you need to stop, we can talk about this somewhere else, at another time. It was just a mistake in the system. Dylan, tell him they got it wrong!" She had tried to remain neutral but she knew her voice was rising with emotion.

Dylan exhaled harshly. "I… I can't." He seemed disconnected, distant from the situation, but there was no mistaking the fear in his eyes.

Lily didn't want to believe what she was hearing. Surely he was just saying this to keep up appearances, to stop Ethan looking foolish. "What do you mean?"

Dylan rubbed his mouth with his hands. He wouldn't look at any of them now, Lily, Ethan or Connie. "When I found Dr Knight –"

"Don't even say his name," Ethan hissed.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. He… he was conscious, and able to speak."

The realisation that Ethan had been telling the truth and Dylan had lied to them both was like a punch in Lily's stomach. Another blow to add to the bruises she'd sustained, and she wasn't sure she could take it. She bit the inside of her lower lip, hard, until she could taste blood. This was happening. Her stomach felt like it was doing somersaults.

"He was asking for you, Ethan. He wanted to make sure you were safe."

"Don't try and paint yourself as a hero, as if you were trying to protect me. Don't defend what you did. You told me outright, to my face, that Cal was unconscious, that **he wasn't in any pain**. Is there anything else you didn't tell me?"

Lily watched as Dylan closed one hand anxiously around the fabric which made up the right-hand pocket on his trousers. His left hand was tapping at his left thigh. She looked away, sickened that she'd been lied to like this.

"Ethan, I didn't tell you because… I couldn't, can't you understand that?"

"NO! I can't understand that!"

Lily grabbed Ethan's hand again. "We need to go home. I can't deal with all this, I need to not be here," she pleaded, pulling the recently-discharged-but-still-sick patient card because she didn't know how else to get away from this horrible, horrible situation. "Please, Ethan, just leave him." Those words stung her throat.

Ethan looked down at her and she barely recognised him. His eyes were cold and harsh. "So you think what he did was right?"

Lily desperately tried to work out the right thing to say. "Of course I don't! I didn't say that!"

While these words seemed to moderate Ethan's temper, Dylan crumpled, internally and visibly. He hadn't had any other choice, how could he possibly have told Ethan the truth when his brother had only just been killed? While he'd been battling to keep Cal alive for long enough for Ethan to see him before he slipped away, Ethan had been rushing from home, with two children in tow, in order to be with his injured wife. It wasn't until Ethan had arrived that anyone had been able to get the news to him that Cal had been stabbed. It hadn't been the right time to reveal the truth, and anyway, not a single person in this department was innocent of telling white lies to the families of deceased patients.

But now it seemed that no-one was aware of this fact, that they were all conveniently ignoring the fact that this was something they had all done, with the best of intentions. As Lily finally got her wish, and Ethan wheeled her carefully out to the car park, the air around Dylan seemed to harden. While everyone was still staring at him, it felt like every one of them had turned their back on him in disgust.

The worst thing was knowing that Lily now thought so little of him that she hadn't said a word to him since he'd been forced to admit his wrongdoing.

When Lily and Ethan were gone, Dylan walked as quickly as he could out of the main reception area. Safely out of view, in the toilets, crushing anxiety got the better of him. He crouched in a cubicle and vomited until his throat was raw and his stomach cramped.


	5. Chapter 5

**Hi :) Quite an angsty chapter tonight, hope it's alright x**

* * *

Lily hoped that in years to come, she wouldn't remember these first awful days at home.

* * *

It was one thing to feel like an invalid whilst also being an admitted patient, but it was quite another to feel as frail as one in your own home. The injustice of this, when Ethan was grieving so extremely and didn't want to look after himself, never mind his wife and two children as well, was palpable. Lily hated that she couldn't be held responsible for her daughter for even a short while, since the painkillers she'd been prescribed made her drowsy and liable to sleep at inopportune moments. She knew that Will was taking on more responsibility than an almost-five-year-old should have to, but it was his willingness to help that sometimes brought a lump to her throat. It was his relentless smile which kept Lily going as she remained completely bed-bound for the best part of a week.  
Lily was reduced to the state she'd been in after her amputation: she had to rely on Ethan to do everything for her. And she hated it passionately. After an indeterminable number of blurry days, stranded on a constant loop between sleep and mild alertness, she started to reduce the pain relief she was taking. Ethan wasn't happy.

"You've been prescribed this many for a reason, Lily, please just stick with it," he remarked, slightly exasperated, when he passed her two pills one morning and she only accepted one.

"No," she insisted defiantly. There was silence for a moment while she swallowed the single tablet.

"Don't think I don't know what you're doing." Ethan could see straight through her plan. She wanted to take fewer drugs so that she'd feel as though her mind was functioning properly, with a view to being able to do more around the house sooner than if she remained on the same course of medication for the prescribed length of time. However, being able to see through Lily's plan meant that Ethan could also shoot several gaping holes in it. For one, she was currently so weak, and in enough pain, that she was drinking water out of plastic cups, as glass ones were just too heavy to hold. And she was unable to get out of bed without help, so goodness knew how she'd manage with less analgesia in her system.

"I can't keep going like this, not doing anything, Ethan, it's destroying me. I hate it, you know I do."

"And if you had a patient, in this situation, who wanted to come off their medication? What would you do then?" Ethan returned sharply.

Lily recoiled a little at his harsh response, sending a shock of pain up her chest. She gritted her teeth for a second, and hoped that Ethan hadn't noticed. "If it was a mother who needed to care for her children, or a wife," she looked at Ethan with a challenging expression, "whose husband needed her completely present, then I would work with the circumstances."

"No, you wouldn't!" Ethan nearly shouted. "You know that's simply not true – you'd argue with them until they agreed to follow medical advice!"

"Please don't treat me like I'm a disobedient child. I am old enough and I have enough qualifications behind me to make my own, informed decision." Her face was set in determination: she wanted to disguise the upset she was feeling.

"I'm not doing this because I think you should do as you're told!" Ethan exploded. "I'm arguing with you because I don't think you realise exactly what you're doing to yourself. I want you to keep taking the pills because every time you move, I see your face close off in pain. I'm not trying to give myself an easy ride here, by drugging you into oblivion – I'm trying to give you an easier ride than the horrific one you've been given, okay?" He fidgeted with his sleeve, unable to look her in the eye.

Lily bit her lip, frowning. "Ethan," she said urgently. She was desperate to diffuse this situation: she hated arguing with him anyway, but it was especially unpleasant in the company of their daughter. Perhaps she couldn't fully comprehend the angry words being fired over her head, but there was no doubt in Lily's mind that Lizzie could understand the difference between emotions. "Please just stop, neither of us is having an 'easy ride' at the moment."  
"Don't try and tell me that I'm arguing with you because I'm grieving, or because I'm still in shock about my brother, or because it would be easier for me if you took the damned pills. I'm doing this because I can't stand to see you hurt yourself more! But if you believe your rose-tinted reality of how it's going to be when you stop taking the painkillers, then good luck to you."

He fired out these last words before standing up from the bed and leaving the room without looking back. Lizzie was still in the space which had been between her parents a few seconds earlier, sitting atop the duvet. She looked at the tears escaping her mother's eyes and highlighting the deep upset on her face. Lily rubbed her right hand down the side of her face. A small mercy was that the bruising around her eyewas at last going down and wasn't quite as sore.

* * *

"Right, that's enough of that," she murmured, half to herself and half to her daughter. "There's not point me sitting here and feeling sorry for myself about all of this, now, is there, little one?" She smiled when Lizzie grinned as if she understood every word. "Shall we get you dressed, then?"  
Lizzie was still wearing her sleepsuit, and this seemed like as good an opportunity as any for Lily to prove that she was fine. Slowly, carefully, gradually, Lily pushed herself up so that she was sitting independently of the pillows she'd been propped up on. A dull ache burned from her collarbone to her hips, but she could work around it. Pausing momentarily, she looked to her daughter and remarked, "I think we're going to have to go old-school today." Lily turned herself so that she was sitting on the edge of the bed, then carefully lowered herself down to sitting on the ground. Every breath felt as though her chest was being crushed. Her heart was beating quickly in her chest. This was a nerve-wracking experience, one which she would much rather be sharing with her husband.  
She knew there was no point in trying to put her prosthetic on yet, and besides, she'd been lying down for so long that if she stood up fully she was at greater risk of fainting due to low blood pressure. At least being closer to the ground meant she was less likely to hurt herself. Kneeling on her right knee, still holding onto the bed firmly, she tested her left leg to see whether she'd be able to move around on her knees. At first the pain was sharp: she bit her lip to stop herself crying out. It subsided a little; she turned back to the bed and gestured to Lizzie. "Come on, come to Mummy." Luckily, Lizzie was paying attention and feeling particularly helpful: she crawled across the bed, allowing Lily to lift her down onto the floor. Carefully guiding her daughter along, Lily managed slowly to make her way across the room then over the landing to Lizzie's bedroom. Using muscles she hadn't used in a while was uncomfortable, and the increase in her rate of breathing was almost excruciating at times.

In the sunny bedroom, some of the pressure on Lily's bad knee was alleviated by the presence of a soft rug on the floor. She switched to sitting on the floor again, shuffled clumsily to get a clean onesie – one with shorter sleeves and legs, as the sunshine outside promised a warm day ahead – and set about the main challenge. It was hard enough trying to dress a squirming baby when one was completely able-bodied.

* * *

When Lily heard Ethan's footfalls on the stairs, she felt a rush of relief tainted with worry. She hoped that he wasn't still angry: her expedition into this room had not been without risk, after all. His eyes were red and puffy. He had been crying again. It didn't feel good to know that her stubbornness had been a driving force behind that.

Ethan looked into Lizzie's room as an impulse, not expecting to see Lily sitting on the floor as if she'd been there all along. She twisted around to look at him, and then swiftly turned back to face the window. He couldn't tell whether she was refusing to look at him because she wouldn't easily forgive him, or because it hurt to turn like that. He sat cross-legged on the rug. After a few seconds, Lily looked at him.

"I shouldn't have underestimated you," he said, reaching out so his hand was on top of hers. "I'm sorry that I got angry. I shouldn't have snapped at you, and it shouldn't have ended up like this."

"I – I shouldn't have been so stubborn. This," she said, gesturing to herself sitting on the floor, "probably shouldn't have happened. It hurt. Still does. I think I should have listened to you," she admitted reluctantly.

"I think," Ethan said, treading carefully, "that this was one of those things that you had to find out for yourself. It will get easier, though."

Lily's expression hardened slightly. "Sometimes, I'm sure you don't listen to the advice you give out. I know that the cards you've been dealt are not the best, but it will get easier, for you too." She stopped short of reminding him that he was not the only one who missed Cal, and who was mourning his loss.

"Okay." Ethan's stomach clenched. The worst part was that he couldn't argue with what Lily was saying. "Can I help you back to bed now, please? As much as I admire the fact that you got out here by yourself, I can't stop myself worrying about you. Please let me help."

Lily nodded, and waited until he had turned his back to put Lizzie safely in her cot for a moment, before clenching her hands anxiously in the fabric of her top. She didn't think she had the energy to make it back to their room unaided, but she couldn't banish the fear of being helped, either. Someone lifting her, even someone as careful as Ethan, could not feel the pain she felt when anything other than soft cotton touched the skin rubbed raw by the tarmac of that car park. As cautious as he would no doubt be, he wouldn't know exactly how to help – because Lily didn't know herself, how best she could be helped!  
It was less than thirty seconds, the time it took for Ethan to carry her from Lizzie's room to her side of the bed, but to Lily it could have been thirty minutes, or maybe a few hours. She gritted her teeth throughout, and tried not to breathe too deeply. She couldn't tell him that he was hurting her, she couldn't explain that she didn't want his help because at least when she was trying to be independent, it was only her fault if it went wrong.

It felt safe, to be gently deposited back on the mattress.

"Okay?" Ethan asked, when she looked up at the ceiling and squeezed her eyes shut, unable to hold it in any longer.

"Yeah," Lily said, letting out a breath which felt like it was cracking the ribs which hadn't been broken in the accident. "Just… ouch." She waited a moment for the pain to subside. "I'll be fine, I just… I will take the pills like I'm supposed to. I don't care how much I feel drugged into oblivion, if it means I don't feel like this." She couldn't let herself cry.


	6. Chapter 6

**Hello again :) Sorry for the hiatus, been on holiday! However, being away from my laptop didn't mean I was away from writing, I used to write all my fic chapters by hand before typing them up so it was just like old times :') This chapter's from Dylan's perspective, hope you like it x**

* * *

Dylan knew it was unkind, and unjust, to keep avoiding Zoe's skype calls. But it didn't seem worth it to answer them, either. Actually, that wasn't quite true. The first time, he had frozen up on hearing the chirpy ring tone: it had been three days after Cal's murder and he'd just finished a shift which had overrun by a couple of hours or maybe more. He hadn't known what to say – how would he say _anything_ about what had happened? He couldn't tell her that he was the one responsible for Cal's life slipping away because she'd only say something unhelpful like suggesting he make an appointment with the counsellor Connie had mentioned a few times. Or Zoe would ask when the funeral was going to be. At the time of the first call he hadn't known, obviously, it was too soon. But now, eight days afterwards, Dylan had resigned him to never know. The pure hatred in Ethan's eyes when he had called him out for lying, in front of the whole department, had told him too clearly that he would not be welcome. Even Lily had refused to look him in the eye, and had (he could not decide whether rightly or not) sided singularly with her husband.

Equally, Dylan knew that it wasn't right to continue to keep from Zoe the new about Cal. He near-constantly contemplated the ethics of _not_ telling her: was she a friend of Cal's? Would it matter if Dylan wasn't the one to break it to her? It was quickly becoming high-profile news so she would find out anyway. No doubt Nick Jordan would be keeping tabs on Holby, and since he and Zoe were working together again, they would both know, soon enough. But if she already knew, maybe she was only so intent on getting hold of him because she was worried about his mental wellbeing, and he didn't want that. He didn't want to be an inconvenience to her; when they were so far apart (3642 miles) if he did cause her any concern then that was all he'd be.

He was aware of his internal monologue becoming circular and erratic. He hated any fluctuation to his mental health and this bump in the road felt particularly unpleasant.

* * *

The next day dawned. Although he was due in work at ten, the bright sunlight which pierced the boat's windows at six thirty couldn't rouse Dylan from his deep sleep. Somehow, he hadn't set his alarm clock, so at half past eight he continued to sleep. When Dylan rolled over and gazed blearily at the bedside clock, it was ten minutes to ten.

"No," he mumbled, rubbing his eyes because obviously he hadn't read that correctly. "Oh no!" he said, much more loudly, once he had ascertained that he was meant to be on-shift in ten minutes. "D – no – Alice, come on, we've got to go!"

He'd almost said 'Dervla' then. It had been almost six years since he'd scattered the ashes of his faithful wolfhound, and coming up to five since Lily had convinced him that it wouldn't be an insult to allow Alice, a border collie then-puppy, to take up residence on the boat. Mentally he berated himself for mixing them up in his half-asleep state.

By some stroke of miracle, Dylan managed to get Alice to doggy day care and himself walking through the doors of the E.D. by twenty past ten. The only thing missing had been his breakfast, and –

"Dr Keogh, you're late." The acid tone of Connie Beauchamp filled Dylan's ears and reminded him that he wouldn't get off lightly for this. He couldn't help feeling a fluttering of anxiety in his chest.

"I'm aware," he replied, a little too sharply.

"I hardly think I need to remind you," she countered, "that we're three registrars short. Punctuality may be important, but on days such as these, presence is more so!"

"I overslept, I'm sorry," Dylan muttered, picking up a file of patient notes and walking to cubicles, ignoring the knowing sensation of hunger in his stomach.

A few feet away, Louise turned to Robyn. "Did he oversleep though, or is that just another lie?" Although Robyn shushed her friend, she couldn't hide her amusement, and a laugh escaped her lips.

Dylan heard their exchange and frowned down at the notes in front of him. It went without saying that the department was lacking three registrars, had it really been necessary for Connie to point this out to him so obviously, in front of so many people? One registrar was so badly injured she probably hadn't yet got out of bed unaided. One was grieving and hated the ground Dylan walked on. And the third was lying in the mortuary because Dylan hadn't been quick enough.

* * *

Not for the first time, he hated himself. This was not the only intrusive thought burrowing its way into his psyche today – by one o'clock he felt weighed down by worry. This wasn't fair: he felt sabotaged by his mind because there were patients here who needed him to be on top form. He was supposed to be out there saving lives and instead he was bumbling along and taking forever over little things because his mind wouldn't stay quiet and behave itself.

Running through checks on the elderly patient in front of him (a lady who had tripped and fallen in the pedestrian precinct) Dylan suddenly had the strangest feeling of absence. It was as though he was on pure auto-pilot, and not the good kind which allowed any of the team to methodically tackled cases in resus. Although physically he was going through all the correct motions and treating the woman with utmost care, asking all the right questions and following accurate lines of enquiry, he felt far away. Detached from the situation, it was as though his actions and voice were being controlled by someone else. Feeling a little like he was crawling through treacle, Dylan clawed back some control.

"I'm terribly, sorry, would you please excuse me a moment?" he said carefully, looking around slightly frantically for someone to take his place. He felt his heartbeat in his throat and swallowed hard in an attempt to put it back where it belonged.

Luckily, or perhaps not, Alicia chose this moment to walk by the cubicle occupied by Dylan's patient. She found herself propelled into treating the elderly lady before she even had a change to argue or ask why. Dylan's face had taken on an oddly pale shade, so she assumed that he was feeling unwell and was taking a quick breather. She had heard about his late arrival and guessed that skipping breakfast was catching up with him. Alicia watched Dylan's retreating form for a few seconds as he walked away, and saw his hands repeatedly ball in to fists, before she turned to her patient.

* * *

In the safety of the gents' toilets (it made him more embarrassed to realise that he was truly hiding in the toilets, even temporarily) Dylan gripped one of the sinks and allowed himself to breathe heavily in a way he would not like to be overheard doing out in the E.D. As quickly as the sense of dissociation had come on, it was fading, leaving palpable feelings of anxiety and fear in its place. Fear that someone would realise what was happening in his head, fear that anyone would think less of him because of it, and fear that he was alone. He rinsed his face with icily cold water. Inspecting his reflection in the mirror before him, he was glad that no-one out there would look at him closely enough to know the turmoil he was experiencing. But, he badly wanted someone to notice. He wanted someone to tell him that he would be all right, if only because it was very difficult to remind oneself of this fact during a bout of heightened anxiety. Looking directly into his reflection's brown eyes, he muttered 'onwards, into battle,' to himself, adjusted his rolled-up sleeves and exited the bathroom.

* * *

Meanwhile, Alicia was toying with the idea of reporting Dylan's unusual behaviour to the Clinical Lead. It wasn't a closely-guarded secret that he had had some significant struggles with his mental health – although not in the time that Alicia had been a part of the E.D. team, so she didn't know what to see as okay and what to notice as a red flag. In any case, she didn't suppose that Dylan would appreciate external interference, so she promised herself that unless she was asked outright by Mrs Beauchamp, she would say nothing. It wasn't any of Alicia's business. The next time she saw Dylan, he looked totally normal, as if nothing had happened.

* * *

Dylan rather hoped that by now, he was quite good at carrying on as if nothing had gone wrong. In fact, he had accepted a patient from the paramedics and was listening intently to the handover information while walking to resus, when Connie put a pin in his 'everything is fine' bubble.

"Dylan, my office, please."

He looked at her incredulously before gesturing with irritation to the patient on the trolley. "Can't it wait?"

"It's alright pal, I've got this one." Dylan turned around quickly at the unfamiliar voice. It was the locum registrar, in place of either Ethan or Lily, both of whom, he thought bitterly, wouldn't be so stupid as to call him 'pal.' Before he knew what was happening, the patient was in resus, accompanied by the locum, a young dark-haired man who, to asinsult to Dylan's injured pride, had sent a jaunty thumbs-up towards the consultant. Oh, to be young and uninitiated, Dylan thought, and to be naïve enough to think that a thumbs-up was apology enough for stealing a patient from right under a consultant's nose!

* * *

In the confines of the Clinical Lead's office, Dylan tried to choose his actions strategically. He remained standing – to sit might suggest that he was intimidated somewhat, which he refused to be in Connie's presence. Also, if he did sit, he was likely to slouch into the chair, a dead giveaway to the bone-deep tiredness seeping through his body.

Was he second-guessing himself and Connie too much? He couldn't tell.

Connie would see that something wasn't quite right with Dylan from the moment the door swung shut when he entered her office. He looked hurriedly between her, the chair she gestured to, and the floor at his feet as she asked him if he'd like to take a seat. Without explanation, he shook his head, and Connie decided not to push it. Picking battles worth fighting, and all that. While forming a sentence in her head, she leaned forwards a little in her own chair, slotting her fingers together and clasping her hands on her desk. She was a little taken aback when Dylan sprung to defend himself before she'd even utters a single word.

"If this is about me taking leave again, I don't need it. I don't want it," he corrected himself, because Connie was more likely to believe that line of argument. It was perhaps unwise to argue with her at all, because she could snap back and hold her ground better than most, however Dylan did not want nor require her to be concerned for him.

"Do you really think so little of me, Dylan, to assume that I've only summoned you in order to badger you into accepting compassionate leave?" She paused, looking at him as though she half-expected an answer. Then she continued speaking, inspecting her cuticles first before trying to catch Dylan's eye. "I wanted to ask if you were all right, after everything that has happened. Because I would absolutely understand, if –" She stopped short, before deciding it would be better to come out and say it. "If things were slipping, and you were feeling more anxious than usual. Please, don't think I'm trying to patronise you; I just feel as though I need to check."

Dylan managed not to return meanly. He wanted to say _You want to check, because Zoe's not here?_ Instead his response was a little pointed. "Well, consider that box ticked, because I'm fine."

Connie's shoulders sank. "I'm not doing this to tick a box!" she said, exasperation clear in her voice. She took a breath, before continuing levelly. "I was trying to be kind, I'm just looking out for you because none of this can have been easy. I know I'm not the person you want to talk to, but remember that there are people who will want to listen, if you decide you want to talk. Just think about it, hmm?"

Dylan knew that his parting shot was unfair, but he couldn't help himself. He was nothing if he did not speak his mind. "I don't do anything _but_ think about it. That's what having a screwed-up mind like mine is like and I just have to live with it. I don't want to talk about it, because that won't change what happened." His temper was flaring. His left hand was in his trouser pocket, balled tightly into the soft fabric lining. His right hand cupped the back of his neck. His pulse was racing. "There's nothing wrong with me," he reiterated, before leaving the room.


	7. Chapter 7

**Hey, a late upload tonight but after that incredible episode, I had to finish my chapter! Even two hours later, #CasualtyOne is still trending on Twitter and I think that's ace. It's pretty cool that a "little British medical drama" has made TV history tonight :D**

 **Enough gushing, I'll try not to be too much of a fangirl! On with the chapter, hope you like it x**

* * *

Ethan didn't allow himself to return to work until he was certain that Lily could cope in the house by herself. There was so much weighing on his mind that he didn't want to return to work at all, but it couldn't be helped. He did still love his job, despite everything that had happened in the E.D., and just one of the thoughts stuck on repeat was that he was needed in the department, without him they were missing three registrars. Having spent so long at home, he felt a little healed, and ready, if unprepared, to return. It would at least be a welcome distraction, to throw himself into working hard. With his brother's post-mortem finally cleared, it was now on Ethan's shoulders, as Cal's next of kin, to make arrangements for the funeral. This was something Ethan deeply dreaded, and was putting off for as long as he could. Something else he dreaded was having to work in the same department as Dylan. Ethan still felt anger bubbling under his skin whenever he considered this: he had never felt more betrayed than when he'd found out about Dylan's callous lies. Knowing that he would have no choice but to face him every day filled him with discomfort.

* * *

His first day back in the E.D. was three weeks after Lily's accident. On arriving in the reception area, he could tell that people were turning to look at him, that they were whispering between themselves with only one topic of conversation. He wished he was with Lily; she was like the final piece of his armour when she stood behind him. Ethan wasn't wearing scrubs today. At his wife's suggestion, he was wearing a shirt and trousers. She was probably right in her reasoning that just today, it might be easier to dress smartly and feel slightly detached from his normal self.

After signing himself in, Ethan was summoned to Connie's office, something which didn't surprise him at all. What did surprise him a little was her offer of a cup of tea, which he politely refused on impulse rather than because he genuinely didn't want it.

"It's good to have you back, Ethan," she said gently.

Sitting very upright on the sofa, he nodded before speaking. "It – um – it felt like the right time. Lily's doing a lot better, we've found childcare for Lizzie, just while Lily's not _quite_ there yet. And I was feeling a little bit stir-crazy," he admitted, lowering his voice as though he might be overheard. He looked away, biting his lip a little.

"It's quite all right. I can't imagine it's been easy for you lately."

"No, no, I'm fine," Ethan replied quickly, eager to show that he was ready to come back. "I just want to go back to normal. I just want to treat some patients and feel like nothing's changed." He stood up, and Connie followed suit, coming to stand in front of him.

"That's something I can fix for you." Her voice was soft as she rubbed the top of his arm. "Just stick to cubicles for today, okay?"

"Okay," Ethan said, his voice fading. He looked at the floor.

Connie straightened his collar for him and adjusted his stethoscope. "Keep up appearances." After a short pause, she spoke again. "If you're not coping, you know where I am."

* * *

Lily was certain that Ethan would cope just fine on his first day back in the E.D., but this didn't stop her being uneasy about it all the same. She was concerned that he and Dylan would come to blows again – without her presence, there would surely be no-one to remind him that the way he was feeling would pass, it wasn't permanent, and there was no reason to take it out on an innocent party. In all the time she'd spent at home so far, she'd come to the conclusion that Dylan was nothing but an innocent party in all of this. It hadn't been pleasant to find out that he'd told both her and Ethan a lie, granted, but no-one in that E.D. was innocent of telling white lies to bereft relatives. Even Ethan himself, despite being caught up in the moment and insisting that he'd never do such a thing, was guilty of precisely that for which he had condemned his friend.

Her husband was still at the beck and call of grief, too. He was adamant that he was fine, but there was a part of her which wanted to reach out and remind him that it was okay to not be okay. And he so clearly wasn't okay, at least not as completely as he would want the world to believe.

Perhaps it would have been different if Ethan and Cal had lived far apart, working in different professions. But they had lived not ten minutes apart for all the time they'd been in Holby. They had worked near-identical jobs in the same E.D., frequently on the same shifts. So to have Cal suddenly no longer in the picture, Ethan's life had a gaping hole in it. Small habits had formed around the presence of his brother, and when these habits surfaced they provided the most painful reminders of loss.

For example, the night before his first shift back in the E.D., Ethan had stopped himself short of sending a text to Cal, finding out if he was working at the same time. The realisation of his mistake had been crushing for him. Worst for Lily was knowing she couldn't change any of it. It was easy enough to change the TV channel to avoid a news piece about a stabbing, but Lily couldn't get inside her husband's head in order to cancel habits which had formed over a long period of time.

It was difficult too, to explain to their son what was happening.

Innocently one evening, Will had made an astute observation, when Ethan had excused himself from the dinner table, giving Lily a warning look to give him a bit of space.

* * *

 _"Mum, is Daddy upset about Uncle Caleb?"_

 _His need to understand the situation nearly brought Lily to tears. She almost didn't want to be honest with him, but from all-too-recent experience, she know that bending the truth would most likely get her nowhere. Stalling for time, she asked Will to pull the Moses basket over from the other side of the room. He did so willingly, and Lily set his sister down in it gently, before gesturing for her son to sit in the chair closest to her. She was still unable to lift him up into her lap, which she desperately wished to no longer be the case._

" _Yes and no, William. He's still very sad that Uncle Cal passed away, and he misses him very much."_

" _Me too," Will replied thoughtfully. "He used to take me to the park for rocket lollies."_

 _Lily looked up at the ceiling for a moment to suppress her emotions. "I miss him too, but it's good to talk about things that he did that made you happy, okay?"_

 _Cal had been, frequently, one of the most irritating people she'd ever come across. But he was good-hearted, underneath all that bravado and masculinity. Despite their arguments, he and Ethan had been very close. Cal had made Lily want to launch him into the next county, or possibly further, but he had made her smile often, too. And he'd never been anything but kind to Will and Lizzie._

" _Is Daddy upset because Dylan doesn't come round anymore?"_

* * *

It was perhaps a month to that day, since Will had seen Dylan. But in his young mind, that probably felt like a very long time indeed. It had deeply upset Lily to realise the impact that Ethan's feud was having on their son, even at that early stage. She couldn't remember precisely what she'd said in response to her little's boy's remark (she'd still been almost sky-high on painkillers so her memory was sketchy at best) but she hoped it had been something to reassure him, without giving away the argument that threatened their friendship with the consultant.

* * *

It was very difficult not to feel isolated in an E.D. where you had more or less been labelled 'public enemy #1.' In his company, the staff of the department were reduced to nothing more than bloody schoolchildren. They were treating him like dirt, but he was finding it hard to reject their judgement of him. He'd done something wrong, he shouldn't have lied, as right as he thought he was at the time, so he must deserve what he was getting.

"I'll get that MRI booked, and keep you updated on how long it'll take," Dylan said, walking out of a cubicle feeling slightly more anxious than he ought to be. Walking towards one of the department phones, he was surprised to see Ethan get there before him. He waited until it was clear Ethan was also waiting, for someone on the other end of the phone, before speaking. He cleared his throat awkwardly. "I – er," he could have kicked himself, it had been so long since he'd struggled to get a sentence out. His mouth was dry, but he pushed forth. "I didn't know you were coming back today," he said simply, settling for a shorter expression than he would have liked, for fear of messing up again.

Ethan frowned slightly. "I didn't think it was important to tell you."

Dylan withdrew slightly. "I didn't mean – I – sorry, just –"

"No, it's nothing," Ethan said expressionlessly. It clearly wasn't 'nothing.' "Did I hear you say you needed an MRI booking? I can do it for you, if you'd like? Save you waiting for the phone, anyway."

Sweet relief flooded through Dylan, from his ears downwards, at hearing those words. He nodded, rubbing the back of his neck with his right hand. He looked at his watch. He had more than enough time to take a few minutes, get a glass of water and just breathe a little, before checking back on his patient.

In the staffroom, he saw Ethan's patient being wheeled past on their way to MRI. _Good,_ he thought, _shouldn't be too long for mine then._ Dylan discreetly pressed the fingertips of his right hand to the pulse point on his left wrist. Too fast. He shook his head and rolled his eyes. Working with Ethan would get easier, and it at least seemed that the registrar wasn't holding a grudge.

* * *

Dylan took on a quick case from triage, but was interrupted but Robyn coming in a few minutes later.

"Dr Keogh, your patient in cubicle 3, what's going on with her?"

"She's going up for an MRI shortly, why?"

Robyn looked embarrassed. "Um, MRI is booked up, solid, with cases from upstairs. None of our patients are going to get in until late afternoon, earliest."

Dylan shook his head. "No, Ethan sorted it, it's fine."

"Oh, um, okay." Robyn bit her lip and shifted uncomfortably on the spot for less than a second, but Dylan's patience was thin.

"Nurse Miller, spit it out if you've got something to say," he said, inflating the blood pressure cuff on the patient in front of him.

"It's just – Ethan got the last slot, didn't he tell you?"

"No, he didn't," Dylan hissed. "Can you carry on here?"

Robyn nodded, agreeing because Dylan looked so angry.

He marched back towards cubicles, his shoes clicking on the floor menacingly.

Ethan was standing with Louise and Jacob.

"When exactly were you going to tell me that there were no MRI slots for my patient?" he said, hiding a clenched fist in his pocket. "Were you going to let her sit there all day, or were you planning to magically _create_ a slot for her?"

Ethan looked stunned. "It must have slipped my mind, I'm sorry, Dylan."

"Dylan, give the boy a break, yeah?" Jacob cut in. "It's his first day back, and we've all made mistakes!"

"Yes, and some of us make bigger mistakes than others," Louise said pointedly as Dylan retreated.

Dylan felt very, very stupid. Of course, Ethan could have made a mistake, and to anyone looking in on the situation, they would believe that that was what had happened. But the further he got from the situation, the more Dylan believed that it hadn't been a mistake, but instead a case of malicious sabotage.

* * *

Back in his patient's cubicle, he had to face the young woman, and worse, her mother.

"It would seem there's been a mix up with the MRI slots," he said, trying to sound breezy but too aware of his voice sounding anything but. "I'm going to discharge you with crutches, so that you keep any weight off that knee, and I will ensure that the MRI department are in touch with you in the next thirty-six hours, to schedule you an outpatient appointment for the scan."

"When were you going to break this to us?" The girl's mother was furious. "We've been sitting here for nearly two hours. Abi missed her maths tuition for no good reason – you know she's applying for Oxford in the autumn?"

"I'm very sorry, Ms Morton," Dylan said, addressing his patient rather than her irate mother. "There's nothing I could have done differently, there was a glitch in the system –" _Well actually, that's a lie, there's a lot you could have done differently. If you weren't so afraid to pick up the phone, you would have called MRI yourself and found out there were no slots._ Dylan took a deep breath in an attempt to push away the intrusive thought crowding his mind.

At that moment, Ethan stuck his head around the curtain of the cubicle. "A slot's come available in MRI, thought you ought to know." The registrar smiled to Abi and her mother, before looking at Dylan with an expression of daggers and disgust.

"Finally!" Abi's mother said. "A doctor in this place who knows what's going on around here!"

* * *

When his patient was safely out of the E.D., Dylan paced angrily outside the front doors, trying to regain some space in his head away from the humiliation he'd just experienced. There was no doubt in his mind now, that Ethan had set him up from the start, to look like a bad doctor in front of his patient. What was he playing at? Didn't Ethan realise that Dylan was hard enough on himself, without anyone else adding to that? He was leaning against the cold exterior wall when he heard the sound of wheelchair wheels on the tarmac. He looked up to see Lily rolling towards him.

"What on earth are you doing here?" he asked, trying to count days and weeks in his head since her accident, in comparison to how long it would take her injuries to heal.

"I could ask you the same question, what are you doing out here, rather than in there?"

Dylan froze. He couldn't tell her. He couldn't accuse her husband of sabotage, to her face. It probably wasn't true anyway; he couldn't make an unfounded accusation. "I asked you first," he replied gruffly.

Lily recognised his tone at one. He was hiding something. Here was not a good place to start digging. "I couldn't stand being in the house any longer. It's been three weeks looking at the same walls, looking at tidying up I can't do or laundry that I can't put out on the washing line."

"So you decided instead to move yourself out of your house and bump along the dodgy lowered kerbs of Holby? You amaze me sometimes, Lily Hardy, you really do." He half-smiled, then thought of something. "You're not in pain, are you?"

Lily looked up at him, not impressed in the slightest. "You sound like Ethan."

"You are still sore then?" Lily's sigh told Dylan that he was correct.

"Let's just say, I didn't think I'd end up like this again. How has your day been?" she asked, politely but firmly pushing attention off herself.

"Mildly anxious," Dylan said simply. "I'm fine. Although I won't be, if that lot in there keep sending me to Coventry. I'm fine, though. Nothing I can't handle."

Lily wasn't sure that Dylan was telling her the whole truth, or indeed any of the truth. She hoped that people were not treating him too badly in there, but you could never tell with the E.D. The relationships forged in there could withstand explosions and fires and disasters, but when it came to testing loyalties, well, that was another thing entirely. She clasped her hands in her lap, before Dylan spoke again, more quietly this time.

"I – I thought you wouldn't… wouldn't want to talk to me anymore. After…"

Lily knew that he was alluding to the lie that he'd told, and the near-fight between himself and Ethan shortly afterwards. But she was crushed by the admission that he expected her to walk away from their friendship completely. "After you did what any of us would have done?"

He had been looking down at his shoes, but at these words, he looked up, hardly daring to believe what she'd said. "What? You… You think I was – I was right?"

Lily rolled forwards a little more, so that she could take his hand. Sometimes human touch was enough to bring someone out of their head. "Know this," she said softly. "Even to Ethan – no, especially to him – I would also have been prepared to bend the truth in order to protect him from a frankly horrific reality."

Suddenly, Ethan came outside and saw Lily with Dylan. Lily dropped her friend's hand at once.

"I'd better go," Dylan said quickly, as Ethan walked over to them.

"No, you don't have to," Lily said firmly.

"Yes, you do. Get away from my wife." Ethan's voice was sharp.

Lily breathed in sharply. The tension in the air was palpable. "Ethan, stop. You can't expect me to discredit everything that's happened between Dylan and I. You can't suddenly decide that because you can't get along with him, I have to despise him too!"

Dylan mumbled something unintelligible and began to walk back towards the doors into the hospital.

Ethan said loudly, making sure that he would hear, "but I do, Lily, and that's not about to change."


	8. Chapter 8

"Ethan, you're not being fair," Lily said sharply, when Dylan was out of earshot, inside the building. "You can't blame him for what happened!"

"Why not!" Ethan exploded, turning his back on Lily for a moment and pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. "He is the only one who let my brother die, why can I not blame him?"

Lily could think of a whole host of reasons as to why Ethan couldn't blame Dylan for what had happened to Cal. At the base of her argument remained the fact that Dylan was a doctor. So, despite what Ethan might be telling himself, to fuel his vendetta, he would have done everything in his power to keep Cal alive. But she didn't have the energy for conflict. She shook her head, signalling to Ethan that she just couldn't continue.

Ethan softened at once. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't be taking this out on you."

Lily resisted the urge to say that he shouldn't be taking it out on Dylan either. "It's okay." She rested her elbows on the sides of her chair, letting her head droop a little. The novelty of being out of the house had worn off. "I only came here to meet you at the end of your shift. It's not far, I shouldn't feel so tired." She omitted the fact that she felt not only physically tired but emotionally drained by the events of the last few minutes.

Ethan bobbed down in front of her. He put a hand on her cheek, and kissed her gently. "And when was the last time you went for any distance in this?" he asked lightly, patting the armrest of the chair. "You're allowed to be tired."

"Not if I want to be walking again any time soon," she said glumly.

"There's no rush," Ethan murmured, tucking an escaped strand of Lily's hair behind her left ear.

 _There is,_ Lily thought, _if I want to be here to pick up your pieces._ Ethan was not as strong as he was making himself out to be.

On the way home, Lily couldn't help herself feeling ridiculously conflicted. She didn't know which of her loyalties was more important. Should she be sticking with one of her best friends, who was so obviously having a difficult time? Or was it more important to remain loyal to her marriage, a relationship which meant more to her than anything else? When it was Ethan who was clearly contributing in a big way to Dylan's malaise in his place of work, she wasn't sure. And underneath it all, no matter how much she understood what he did, Lily had still felt remarkably uncomfortable, knowing that she had been lied to.

She covered her eyes with her hands for a moment.

"Are you okay?" Ethan asked, quickly concerned after looking over to her in the passenger seat.

Lily sat up straight at once. She was pleased that it hurt slightly less than had become the usual. "Of course I am, I'm fine."

* * *

Connie was alone in her office, holding a difficult phone call with Hanssen. She pressed her fingertips to her forehead. "Henrik, there must be something you can do. Cal Knight died _here,_ because of something that happened _here._ He's one of ours," she said with great emphasis.

"Leave it with me, Mrs Beauchamp. I can't promise anything, you know I can't."

"No, but all I'm asking you to do is try." Connie pushed the phone back into its cradle. She knew she had allowed her emotions to seep into her words. But perhaps that was for the best, with the request that she had made.

* * *

At home, that evening, Lily waited until Ethan was putting the children to bed, before leaning down to pick up her prosthetic foot from under the bed. For a minute or two, she just held it in her hands, looking at it as if it might explode.

Slowly, she wriggled out of her leggings and put on her pyjama shorts, because folding the bottom of her leggings into the socket of the prosthetic was more trouble than it was worth. She could hear Ethan reading Will a story, in their son's bedroom down the landing, and she concentrated on her husband's soothing tone instead of her racing heart.

She carefully inserted her residual limb into the prosthetic and fastened it a little more loosely than she would have done ordinarily. Swinging both legs over the side of the bed, she put both feet on the floor and stood up.

Lily waited for the shock of pain which she fully expected.

It didn't come.

There was some pain, obviously. Her skin wasn't entirely healed yet, so to push against a plastic prosthetic wasn't comfortable. There was still bruising around her knee and hip, but the "shock" that she had expected was a glorious anti-climax. It was sore, but she could manage it. Lily felt her chest fill with emotion, and it was the sudden inhalation that caused pain she couldn't handle. She let out a gasp, and pressed her left hand to her chest as she fell back onto the bed. Falling was not a good idea.

Ethan came skidding into the room.

"Lily?" his voice was full of concern. "What happened?" He was confused: her eyes were watering dreadfully, but there was still a joyous smile lighting up Lily's face. He looked down and saw that she was wearing her prosthetic foot. His eyes widened. "What were you thinking?" He sat down beside her at once, holding her hands as her smile turned into a grimace.

Finally, she gritted her teeth slightly, exhaled delicately, and regained the power of speech. "I stood up. I did it, I stood up, and I was fine!"

Ethan still looked worried. "But –"

"But nothing," Lily said swiftly. "I got excited, I breathed in too quickly, too deeply. I'll be all right."

"If you're sure, then I'm proud of you. I'm so, so pleased that you did it."

Lily nodded, squeezing his hand, hoping she wouldn't give the game away. She didn't tell him about the pain in her chest that was becoming raw and sharp. Presently, he left her in the bedroom to go and tuck Will in properly. She took off her prosthetic and lay down on the bed, staying still so that her shallow breaths wouldn't make her feel dizzy.

* * *

The next day, Ethan returned to work feeling content in a way he hadn't since before Lily's accident. She was healing. It was time for him to do the same.

In Cubicle 2, he found himself treating a quiet lady in her late sixties. Like several patients of her age that Ethan had treated, she was eager not to cause any trouble.

"I'm sure it's fine, dear, just my son worrying."

Ethan scanned her notes, remembering what he'd seen of her patient records a few minutes ago, albeit briefly. "Well then I'll just quickly check you over and I'll have you on your way, then, won't I?" He smiled a little at her.

"You've got a lovely smile," she said absently, before wincing as she shifted on the bed.

"Oh, um, thank you," Ethan replied, looking down at her notes again, embarrassed. "I'm a little concerned for your hip, Mrs Watson. It says in your notes that you were admitted here for a short period last year, with a fracture?"

"Ah, yes. Lot of fuss over nothing. Although I did see a lovely young doctor in A&E, a young man, about your age." She rubbed the knuckles of her left hand, one by one.

Ethan felt his heart quicken in his chest. "That – that would have been Dr Knight, I think."

"Yes, that's him! Big smile, quite cheeky. Distracted, I think, perhaps preoccupied with one of young ladies…"

A lump rose into Ethan's throat. He swallowed it quickly. "That sounds just like him. Did you, by any chance, fall on your left hand this afternoon?" He knew it was safer to move on than to remain talking about Cal. He didn't trust himself to hold it together.

He quickly arranged an x-ray of Mrs Watson's hip and hand, and was about to leave in the care of Robyn, when his patient spoke again. The final limit. "That Dr Knight, does he still work here?"

Ethan's eyes shone with tears, and Robyn shot him a startled look. He blinked hard, clearing his throat. "No. He – um – he moved on. Couldn't stay in a little place like this."

"I expect you miss him quite a lot, ray of sunshine like that," Mrs Watson said innocently.

"Pardon?"

"The team, dear, you must all miss him. I imagine he left quite a gap when he moved away."

"Oh – yes – um – sorry, can I just…"

He turned to walk out of the cubicle, and clumsily struggled to get past the blue curtain. A few steps away, he stared blankly out into the department. People were moving all around him, in fact one of the porters knocked him slightly as he rushed by, but Ethan felt as though he was millions of miles away. His throat ached with suppressed emotion. He licked his lips.

"Ethan?" Charlie's voice sounded quite distant.

"Are you okay?" Alicia asked, stepping close enough to Ethan that he could focus tightly on her. He felt his bottom lip tremble.

He could hear Charlie speaking again. "Has anyone seen Connie? Where's Mrs Beauchamp?"

Alicia steered Ethan away, half-pushing and half-pulling him into the staff room. She closed the door behind them.

* * *

It was only in the silence of the staff room that Ethan realised he was crying, hard. He felt Alicia wrap her arms around him, and he sobbed into her shoulder for an indeterminable length of time.

"It's okay, Ethan. Let it out, it's fine, it's just us. No audience, no crowd. Just… peace."

"She asked – about – Cal. The p-patient."

Alicia's breath hitched in her throat.

"I told – h-her that… that he moved away." Ethan's shoulders were heaving.

"What else could you say?" Alicia said gently. She let out a small sigh. "It's going to be all right, you know. I know, it doesn't feel like it right now, but I promise it will get better."

He slowly stood up straight, breathing heavily. His cheeks were tingling and his ears buzzed unpleasantly. When Alicia pressed a handful of tissues in his direction, he accepted them gratefully.

"You didn't have to do all this," he mumbled, taking his glasses off and wiping them carefully on his scrub top, before walking over to the sink. He placed his glasses on the side, and rinsed his face with cold water. After drying his face, he turned back to Alicia and leaned against the sink.

"Yeah, I think I did." Alicia's voice was steady, although her hands were knotted behind her back. "I couldn't leave you out there, with all of them watching. It's not nice, having an audience like that."

Ethan shook his head. "Thank you."

"What are friends for, eh?"

There was a knock, and they both turned to see Mrs Beauchamp standing in the doorway. To the best of Ethan's knowledge, she had been in a meeting for most of the morning. He would have said that, when Charlie was looking for her before, but he hadn't been in a fit state to say anything.

"Dr Munroe, could you excuse us, for a few minutes, please?" Connie asked clearly.

Alicia squeezed Ethan's shoulder on her way out of the room.

* * *

"Rough day?" Connie said, crossing the room to sit down and gesturing to Ethan to do the same.

Ethan laughed, hollowly. "Something like that, Mrs Beauchamp. I'm fine. Life goes on."

"When my father passed away, people kept telling me that. _Life goes on._ Sometimes it made me want to scream. Sometimes life going on around you is the worst part." She looked at Ethan's red eyes, and wondered if now was a bad time for what she had to say. She wondered if _any_ time was a good time for this. "Ethan, the Trust have offered to pay for Cal's funeral."

Ethan covered his mouth with both hands. For a second or two, his ears were ringing, the same as before. He moved his hands so that they were clasped in his lap. He bit his bottom lip.

Connie put her hand out to reach Ethan's. "It's probably a strange thing to take in, I'm sorry."

"S-sorry?" Ethan spluttered. "Why should you be sorry?" He put two and two together, and wondered whether this was the reason why she hadn't been seen down here all morning. "It's… it's a a very kind gesture, and if – if you had anything to do with it, anything at all…"

He looked up and met Connie's eyes. All she could see was a frightened little boy.

"Thank you," he said at last.

She nodded, pressing her lips together firmly.

Ethan changed the subject at once. "Lily put her prosthetic on last night, for the first time since her accident. She hasn't tried walking on it, but I don't doubt that now she has tried standing, she'll probably be walking about by the time I get home today."

Connie smiled. "Now _there_ is some good news."

"It made her happy." He sniffed and rubbed the corner of one eye. "It's nice to get back to normal."

He sounded almost wistful; Connie hastened to bring him back down to earth. "Ethan, after what the two of you have been through… It's all about finding a new normal. It's just catching up with the world again, isn't it?"

Ethan wasn't sure he'd ever heard more truth than that.


	9. Chapter 9

Lily planned her return to the E.D. meticulously. Despite its difficulty, she had been making a point of doing more than her share of household chores, in order to prove to Ethan that she was recovering. The hardest, but the one she knew was the most important in proving herself, was picking up after her children and putting them to bed. Constant bending down and standing up to tidy their toys and put their clean laundry away had been awful to begin with, but using her muscles was a little easier each day and at the end of the week which had marked Ethan's return to work, she took Will to bed, read him a story and tucked him in. What Ethan didn't know was that she had stumbled into their room immediately afterwards, kicked off her prosthetic and lay on the bed until the pain-prompted nausea had subsided. She could not yet trust herself to carry Lizzie upstairs and lower her into her cot. Lily might have been prepared to push the boundaries of what she could do, but she would not put her children in danger: this was precisely the reason why she also would not deal with bath time yet.

Her careful plan was a success, because when she casually mentioned to Ethan that she would be returning to work in a few days, he smiled.

"You've come a long way, in such a short space of time," he said, pride evident in his voice.

"Well, you know me, I am not content to sit around and do nothing." She inhaled, and suppressed a wince.

Ethan looked at her a little more intently. "You're sure it's not too soon? You know that Mrs Beauchamp is perfectly happy for you to have more time, if you need it, right?"

"Of course I am," Lily replied sharply. Unbeknownst to her husband, Lily had taken a number of phone calls from the Clinical Lead during the course of her four-week absence. The first had been utterly mortifying: about five days after coming home, Lily had still been emotionally wrought, and she remained embarrassed about the way she had responded to the simple question of _how are you coping?_ There had been tears, and Lily's deep-seated frustration with her own weakened state had been clear.

"If I didn't think I was ready, I would not be putting myself back in that situation, I'm not stupid," she went on, ending the conversation flatly.

Lily knew that her attitude, and come to think of it, Ethan's shortening temper, was widening the gap between them. She hated it. Once upon a time, no-one had made her feel safer than her husband. But, once upon a time, she could also trust him not to send a vulnerable friend in the direction of a mental health disaster, so she had to get back into the E.D.

* * *

When Lily walked into the kitchen on the morning of her return to work, she was surprised to see Ethan sitting at the table with two cups of tea already made. His jaw dropped subtly as he took in her appearance. Lily adjusted her glasses, mildly embarrassed. He looked at her, standing in the doorway and leaning against it a little awkwardly.

Since becoming a registrar she had largely abandoned wearing scrubs in favour of smarter clothes and, usually, impressive mid-heels, considering her prior malaise around balancing on anything more than a flat shoe, with her prosthetic. Today she was wearing patent leather brogues (he could tell that she was nervous about today, and this was the reason why she was playing it safe with flat shoes) with a soft white blouse and a navy pencil skirt. The blouse had black buttons and black piping around the collar and cuffs.

"I think you look incredible… And you know full well that I think that every day, not just today. Is that blouse new?"

Lily smiled, her eyes lighting up. "Well, it's not really new, but I bought it a few days before the accident, and I haven't had a reason to wear it yet." She collected a bowl from the cupboard and completely disguised the uncomfortable pull in her chest, as she reached down for the box of cornflakes. She sat opposite Ethan, who realised before she did that she hadn't remembered to get the milk from the fridge. He stood up at once and brought it over silently. Placing it down in front of her, he put a hand on her left hand, which was steadying her bowl as she poured cornflakes from the box. When she had put the box down on the table, she looked up and met his eyes. "What?" she asked, a puzzled smile on her lips.

"Nothing. I'm really proud of how far you've come, that's all."

"Is that why you're up early on your day off?" Lily knew that he had been disappointed to learn he wasn't on this shift with her, when he'd checked the rota at the end of the previous week.

Ethan nudged her leg with his foot. "Yes. And… first day nerves. I thought you might like some company over breakfast. Company that doesn't involve getting little people organised and out of the door."

Lily shifted in her seat. He wasn't wrong that first day nerves were making an appearance. "Thank you, I really, really appreciate it."

He stood up and leaned towards her to kiss her forehead. Leaning part of the way to meet him, Lily was made aware of having not taken any painkillers yet this morning. It was true that she was on a greatly reduced dose now, but she did still need them.

* * *

"Lily?"

She turned around too quickly, having heard Dylan's incredulous voice behind her. How long had she been standing here, looking up at the hospital?

"You're not… Are you coming back to work, today?" Dylan hoped her answer would not be 'yes.' She had been standing looking at the E.D. as though she was about to walk to her impending doom. She looked more like a startled F1 than the confident registrar he was accustomed to.

She nodded. "Yes. I'm fine now. Fixed." She ran a hand through her hair, embarrassed by having spoken to Dylan in the same way she would have done to Will or Lizzie. "Sorry, I didn't mean to talk to you as if you were a child. Force of habit, I think. I am fine, though." Lily knew she sounded a little distracted. She couldn't help it. It had seemed like the right thing to do, to come back – no, she knew it was the right thing to do – but even from this distance, the E.D. seemed so loud and bustling. Would she even fit back in there?

"That'll be why you're holding yourself so stiffly, then?" he asked rhetorically. God, she even _sighed_ stiffly, as though it would cause her great pain to do otherwise.

She hummed noncommittally, as though she wouldn't say any more on the subject.

"It all seems a bit loud from here, doesn't it?" he said gently, understanding her reluctance to walk straight in. He had felt the same, returning after his mental health had taken such a hit that he'd ended up drawing all the attention in the E.D. away from Ethan proposing to Lily. "I promise you, it's like the sea, it's better if you just go straight in. Don't pussyfoot around on the edge for too long, or you'll never do it."

It was comfort to Lily, to listen to Dylan's straight-talking advice. "Let's go then?"

Privately, Dylan didn't think that was a good idea. She didn't know the half of how things were for him in there at present, and he didn't want her to be dragged into the middle of it, or worse, he didn't want anyone to think poorly of her for spending time with him. His pulse picked up a little. In response, he pinched the pressure point in the webbing between his left thumb and index finger. Zoe had once told him that it was meant to help with anxiety.

"Okay."

As he expected, the members of the team waiting around reception all went quiet when he walked in accompanied by Lily.

Lily wished that Dylan had told her how unpleasant people were being with him. It might have prepared her a little for the wave of disgust which flooded through her, when Robyn, Louise and Jacob stopped their conversation in order to stare.

"Haven't you got better things to do, than to be nasty and downright childish?" she snapped, standing in front of them and raising one eyebrow, feeling more like their teacher than their colleague.

"Haven't you got better things to do, than spend time with a liar?" Louise countered.

As Jacob laughed, Lily felt her cheeks colour immediately. She didn't know what to say, and was immensely grateful when Duffy walked over and chastised Louise. "Um, Louise, that's enough! What happened to professional conduct?"

"Maybe you should be asking Dr Keogh the same question," Robyn said, not with quite the same confidence that Louise had had a moment before.

Having heard some of what was unfolding, Charlie joined them. "Enough!" he shouted. "Louise, resus with Mrs Beauchamp, Jacob in cubicle 1 and Robyn in cubicle 4 with me. If you're going to behave like children then I'm going to treat you like children!"

Begrudgingly, the three nurses did as they were told. Duffy turned to Charlie. "Thank you," she said quietly. Charlie took her hand and kissed her cheek before heading for cubicles. Duffy looked back to Lily and Dylan. "Okay?" she said to Dylan, who nodded firmly. "Welcome back to the madhouse," she added to Lily, squeezing the registrar's shoulder carefully.

* * *

In the staffroom, a new notice had been pinned to the wall above the sink. _For reasons of security, if you are leaving the department, even for a short time, please ensure that someone knows where you are going._

* * *

Away from the injustice she had just witnessed, it took some control for Lily not to explode. "Why didn't you tell me?" she said to Dylan loudly. "You could have called, you _should_ have called." Lily's heart was beating faster, and she felt almost as though her head was spinning. "Why didn't you say how… how awful they've been?"

Dylan just looked at her, knowing that words wouldn't come. He shook his head. He tapped his thigh, hoping that Lily wouldn't notice. Luckily, she chose this moment to turn and face into her locker, looping her stethoscope around her neck, under her dark plait. Oddly, it was easier to speak when she was facing away from him. He'd never experienced this before. "What would I have said? There was nothing to say that wouldn't make it sound trivial and pathetic, and you know it, because it is trivial and pathetic."

Lily turned back around. "That doesn't give them the right to treat you like that. It's not fair! And I still would have listened. I still would have cared."

Their exchange was cut short by Sam Strachan coming into the staffroom. Dylan quickly excused himself – where Connie had obviously been trying to reduce some of the pressure on him (as much as he wasn't sure he appreciated it) Sam had been more than making up for it (which he definitely _didn't_ appreciate in the slightest.)

"Welcome back, Lily," Sam said smoothly, not concerned by the speed at which Dylan had left the room on his arrival, where Lily certainly was.

"Um, thank you," she replied, conscious that getting angry earlier had led her to stand in a position she was unused to. She rubbed the top of her chest when Sam was looking into his locker, and immediately dropped her hand when he turned around. "Mr Strachan," she enquired quietly, "why are you wearing scrubs?" She hoped that her question didn't come across as rude. It had merely been something of a surprise to see the Medical Director not dressed in a suit and tie.

Sam laughed a little. "I resigned the title of Medical Director," he said, completely blasé as if he'd said nothing more important than describing the weather. "I'm filling the registrar vacancy for a while."

His tone had not changed even a little bit when he said this, and Lily wondered afterwards whether it was this that made her see red. At first she was stunned to silence, and then all at once she summoned the nerve to answer back.

"I'm sorry, _the vacancy_?" She was speaking louder than she had intended but she didn't care. "One of our colleagues was murdered, my _brother-in-law_ was murdered! He was a good man, a friend to more people in his short time than I will probably will be in my entire life, and he _**died**_ , and all you can say is that this department has a vacancy for a specialist registrar?"

As quickly as her courage had appeared, it faded into nothing and she realised exactly who she was talking to. She all but ran out of the room and ran straight into Connie, who had been on her way to find out exactly what was going on in the staff room. The collision was painful but she was not about to admit this to anyone.

Connie put a hand on each of Lily's shoulders. "Lily, what on earth's the matter?" she asked, with the compassion of a mother trying to gauge the upset of her daughter.

Lily shook her head, although her eyes were misting with tears. She couldn't form into a single coherent sentence, all the reasons she was upset. She was embarrassed, firstly. She had been back in the department for five minutes and already she'd drawn attention to herself far too much: by being kind to Dylan, by picking a fight with Louise, and for creating a scene here, in the staffroom. Leading on from this, she felt a deep sense of shame because, whether he was currently acting as a registrar or not, Mr Strachan was her superior and she had just shouted straight in his face. For one awful moment, Lily was convinced that she might be about to lose her job. Now that the situation had settled in her mind for a few seconds, it was grief that was creeping in, reawakened by Sam's reckless choice of words. And due to running straight into Connie, Lily had subjected her already-injured body to further blunt force impact. If she admitted this to the Clinical Lead, she would be sent home before the hour was up.

Lily couldn't see a way to sum this up in a sentence, so she simply shook her head, and wiped her tears away with her fingertips. Connie gently led her back into the staffroom and closed the door behind them.

Connie glared at Sam. "If this is down to _you_ , Mr Strachan, then you won't be in possession of those scrubs long enough to see out this shift."

Lily started in horror. "No!" she said quickly. "No, it's nothing, really, I'm fine. I allowed my emotions to cloud my judgement. I shouldn't have been angry." She looked down at the floor.

Completely oppositely to Lily's reaction, Sam remained unflappable as ever. "I owe you an apology, Lily. I was insensitive and I should have considered my words more wisely."

Out of everyone's earshot, Connie muttered, "not for the first time." But then she looked at Sam and spoke aloud. "You're excused. Resus, trauma call, seven minutes. Go." When the door had swung shut behind Sam, Connie forgot herself and her status and pulled Lily into a hug.

At first, Lily was surprised to be hugged by Connie, but human nature soon kicked in, and she began to cry, relieved at last of the burden of holding it together.

"Everything's changed," she said after a while.

Connie, not knowing about the way in which Dylan was being treated by certain individuals in the department, thought that Lily was alluding to the absence of Cal in the department and the change that this had brought about.

* * *

"He said WHAT?" Dylan said, putting his coffee cup down rather more violently than he had intended.

"Hmm," Lily hummed thoughtfully. "It's all right, I gave him a piece of my mind." She fidgeted with the paper napkin on the table in front of her. Both of their shifts were over now, and they were having a drink in the hospital coffee shop furthest from the E.D.

"I should hope so too. I'm sorry, Lily, I should have stayed."

"What for? He obviously made you uncomfortable." Lily was adamant. There had been no point in them both starting their shift on the wrong foot. After an hour or so, it was clear that those who had set out to knock the wind from Dylan's sails as he arrived were not solely bound to cut him with words. The whole department was positively frosty towards him. It made her uncomfortable to experience first-hand the ways that they were so obviously making his working life more difficult than it needed to be. It worried her deeply that she had noticed him tapping the back of a file of patient notes, in fours. He hadn't been aware of it, she was certain.

When Lily spoke again, she made sure to catch Dylan's full eye contact first. "Dylan, the funeral is next week. Tuesday. Please come." She knew full well that she was taking a risk with this request. As much as it might displease Ethan greatly, in her opinion Dylan needed the closure and finality that the funeral would bring. It might help him begin to move forwards, rather than remain stuck on this one, horrific event.

"I – uh – that," Dylan faltered. "I don't think that's… I don't think it would be a good idea for me to be there," he finally said, very quickly. "I don't think you've thought it through either. Why would you want me there, of all people?"

"I wish you knew how much it upsets me, to hear you say that you think I wouldn't want you there. It's painful to listen to how low your opinion of yourself has become. I don't want you to feel like that. I want you there as my friend. I want you there as the doctor who did his best for Cal, to try and keep our family in one piece. I want you there," she said, lowering her voice, "because I think it might help you, to get some closure from it."

Dylan looked as though he might be about to say something, but then his face changed. Lily could tell that his anxiety had gotten in the way and made him think better of whatever he had wanted to say.

"Just give me your word that you'll think about it?"

Dylan bit the inside of his bottom lip. Silently, he nodded.


	10. Chapter 10

**I haven't been good at leaving author notes at the tops of my chapters lately. Maybe I've been all written out, sorry/not sorry for the lengthy chapters! But I think I need to say thank you totheverystuffoflife for your endless enthusiasm for this story and moral support for which I am always grateful, and to TheBeautifulNerd too, because you are excellent and need to remember that :)**

* * *

Lily was leaning against the lockers, reading a set of patient notes for what seemed like the tenth time. Her reading progress was being inhibited by glancing every few seconds over the top of the paper file in order to watch Dylan doing the same task, on the other side of the staffroom window. It concerned her, the way that he had read his first paragraph so many times. She could see his hands shake slightly, and she wished that he would just talk to her about how he was feeling (and then she remembered that it was Dylan she was thinking about, who was, of late, so reluctant to speak at all so would not take kindly to being asked directly about his inner workings.) He compensated quickly for his anxious tics: he turned around smoothly to rest the notes on the counter behind him, and pressed the palms of his hands flat on either side of the papers.

* * *

Although seemingly concentrating on the notes in front of him, Dylan's mind was elsewhere. __They think they can try and push me around and make my life difficult?__ he thought. __Well, two can play at that game.__ He was scheming ways to undo the nastiness that was the way he was being treated, to turn it around to the perpetrators who were set on making him look like a fool.

Already, this morning, he had prevented a repeat of the fiasco with the MRI scanner. One of his patients had required an urgent scan, and after phoning MRI to book one he had discovered, again, that all the slots were booked up. On further enquiry, the patients filling the slots were all Ethan's. After running himself half-ragged, reading patient notes, taking his own case histories and divulging reasons for admission, it appeared that three of the patients were merely taking up slots to prevent Dylan's patients getting one. Mentally exhausted already, he called MRI back and cancelled the unnecessary slots, freeing space for his own patient, whose condition had worsened, even in the forty minutes that it had taken to fix this mess.

"I know you don't want to work with me, but I really thought you were above squandering resources and putting lives at risk, simply to 'get one up' on me!" he had snarled at Ethan.

"And I thought you had more integrity than to lie to my face. I suppose we were both sadly mistaken." Ethan's response had taken Dylan by surprise. Previously he had believed Ethan's moral compass to be straight and true, but clearly this was no longer true. It made him feel uneasy to know that the registrar was honestly willing to use his patients as pawns in his strategic game of destruction. He wondered who, exactly, Ethan was out to destroy. The police as yet had found nothing to link Scott Ellisson to Cal's murder, which was unjust seeing as Ethan had received clear threats on his life, the night that Cal had been killed. But as this was purely anecdotal evidence, the police had no proof. It was unbelievable that there was no CCTV footage anywhere, to show that Scott had been here. He must have been. No-one else would make an attempt on the life of an innocent doctor; it could only have been someone who was completely unhinged, with no moral compass to speak of. The whole Ellisson family fitted that description. It was sickening that Ethan was stooping to their level of immorality.

* * *

To Lily, this shift felt relentless. Being back in the E.D. meant she had no choice but to be fully alert and on her feet all day. Maintaining a brave face was harder than she had anticipated. Finding time to keep an eye on the clock and take her medication at the correct intervals was harder. She had forgotten how difficult it was to even find time to grab a glass of water and a sandwich in full view of everyone, never mind find a moment of quiet to slip away unnoticed in order to take painkillers that if anyone knew she was still taking they would most probably send her home. Lily was nonetheless insistent: her cognitive function was in no way impaired, and if she felt that it ever became so, she would send herself home.

Dylan and Ethan seemed to be at minor-scale war, which was exhausting. And it was only Monday. She could tell that they attempted not to argue in front of her, but their success to this end was variable at best. She hated to be the one to remind them to stop acting like children. There was no escape from it: they bickered incessantly when they shared the same air, and if Lily happened to be in the same place as one of them alone, without fail someone else would jump in and get a piece of the action, either by commending Ethan for holding the moral high ground (if Lily had bitten her tongue over this once, she'd done it a thousand times) or by criticising Dylan for something totally unrelated to his battle with Ethan.

* * *

"Are you all right, Lily?" Connie's voice pulled Lily out of her head.

It was the end of Lily's shift, and by rights, the end of Ethan's too, but there was no sign of him. Lily had been standing outside the staff room, leaning against the wall to the left of the door, wishing she had remained in the staffroom. She wanted nothing more than to not be standing upright. Tomorrow, there would be a whole lot of being on show, and right now she wanted to be at home, hiding from the world in peace.

"Yes," she replied. Was it a lie, if she was also convincing herself of its truth?

Connie took a step closer to Lily. "I expect you rather want to be at home, getting some peace before tomorrow." Not for the first time, Lily wondered whether Connie had the ability to read minds.

Meekly, she nodded. She looked around, checking that Ethan wasn't in earshot. Unable to meet Connie's eye, she said quietly, "I'm dreading it. I'm wishing it away… but that never works, does it?"

The Clinical Lead's eyes glistened. She watched Lily knot her fingers, wringing her hands so hard it looked uncomfortable. Connie's heart ached for the young couple. They'd seen too much tragedy, experienced too much injustice for two such good people. She reached out impulsively to gently separate Lily's hands. "You are a remarkably strong young woman, Lily. You would do well to remember that. Chin up, and remind the world who they're dealing with, okay?" Then, she heard rushed footfalls coming towards them, which could only belong to Ethan. "I'll see you in the morning, Lily. One more day of strength."

Lily wished that it __would__ only be one more day of strength.

* * *

Zoe's skype tone erupted from Dylan's laptop, spreading around the living room of the boat. Before he'd had time to think about it, he had clicked 'answer.' Her face filled the screen, and immediately he felt her eyes scrutinising his appearance. How did she manage to do that, even through a screen?

He had expected her to observe pleasantries and make small talk, at least say 'hello' first, but it was clear that Zoe was in no mood to do any such thing.

"Dylan, I've been trying to get hold of you for a month!"

"Well good evening to you too." He checked his watch. "Or should I say 'afternoon' on account of the time difference?"

"Don't start with that, I haven't got time to debate your sarcasm!"

Dylan observed the limited view he had of Zoe's surroundings. "You're still in work," he remarked.

"Yes, because I figured if I caught you more or less as you got home from work, you might finally answer me, to get me off your back." She looked at him as if daring him to challenge her accurate assumption. "You need to talk to me, please."

"Did you miss me?"

Zoe pressed her fingertips to the space between her eyebrows. She knew that Dylan was putting up a front; he was being deliberately obstructive in order to distract her from… from what? What was he trying to hide? "Not now, Moriarty," she said, sighing a little. "I saw the news… about a doctor from Holby, and I've been worried sick."

Dylan ignored the way his stomach lurched at her words.

"I've been trying to find out what happened since news reached us over here," Zoe went on, "but my geographical location doesn't lend itself to accessing news sites in Holby. I even made Nick try and get in touch with the hospital, but that was impossible."

"That would be due to the plague of journalists swarming the hospital, and the E.D. in particular, for the last four weeks. I seem to remember Hanssen taking a hard line with anyone trying to contact the hospital for information."

When Zoe spoke again, it sounded like she was speaking through a lump rising in her throat. Dylan realised he had to tone down the way he was beating around the bush. She had no idea what she was walking into. He couldn't tell her the whole truth. As the seconds ticked on, he wondered whether he would be physically able to say anything. He felt as though his mind was fogging up with the pressure of what he knew. He wasn't a good person to break this news. He'd do it wrong, he'd make an unnecessary comment or be unhelpfully brisk. Why had he clicked 'answer'? It would have been easier to let sleeping dogs lie: what Zoe didn't know couldn't upset her, and the news he would shortly have to break would undoubtedly upset her deeply.

"All we've been able to find out," she said quietly, glancing over the top of her laptop (it sounded, from the muffled crashing about, that someone clumsy had just entered the room Zoe was in) "is that it was a male registrar in his thirties from Holby's E.D." She looked at him with a pained expression, her eyes wide. "I know it's awful, but I've been hoping that it was a locum, that it wasn't someone I knew, because the only two fitting that description are Ethan and Cal." She covered her mouth with one hand and squeezed her eyes shut. The thought of anything happening to either of them was frankly atrocious - Cal was half of the life and soul of that place, and Ethan had Lily, and their two children. When she opened her eyes again, she noticed that Dylan's brisk exterior had slipped. "Dylan, who was it?"

"It was Cal," he replied hollowly. Zoe covered her face with her hands, and he felt that he had to carry on. "He was stabbed, there was nothing they could do." He couldn't tell her that he had been the one to find Cal, bleeding out and struggling to draw breath, slumped in the pouring rain outside the E.D., too far out of sight for anyone to find him before it was too late. "I should have told you sooner. It got harder and harder to answer. I didn't know what to say."

Zoe wiped her eyes with her thumbs. She pressed her lips together tightly, before mouthing something to someone Dylan couldn't see. "It's okay." She sniffed. "When's the funeral?"

"Zoe -"

"I'll get a flight, it'll be fine -"

"Zoe, please -"

"I'll sort it, okay?"

"Zoe!"

She finally stopped, and raised her eyebrows questioningly.

Dylan looked up at the ceiling. "It's tomorrow."

The rush of disappointment the Zoe felt at that moment was almost unbearable.

* * *

For maybe the first time ever, Lily woke up before Ethan, on the morning of the funeral. It was a grey, dismal day, with low clouds that seemed to suffocate her with the grief she had not yet let free, but that she knew would be liberated this morning. It was going to rain today. She reached for Ethan's hand - his arm was draped across her chest and it wasn't comfortable - and lifted it so his palm was on her shoulder. She allowed herself to be immobilised by his presence for a while, her fingers closed around his hand.

A few minutes later, she felt Ethan stirring beside her.

"Morning," she mumbled, omitting the 'good' because nothing could make this a good morning.

Ethan did not reply. He snuggled closer to her, holding her close and resting his forehead against her upper arm. Instantly, Lily felt the moisture of his tears on her skin. Today would be a hard day.

* * *

Dylan looked in his bedroom mirror, straightening his tie. He was still in two minds about going to the funeral, but now that he was up early, with the morning booked away from work, it would be rather a waste not to go. He knew that Ethan would not want him present. But Lily had made it clear that she did want him there, and Cal had been a well-liked colleague; perhaps those who were being nasty to him lately would use non-attendance as more fuel for their fire. None of them would be vile enough to be outwardly unpleasant to him at Cal's funeral, at least.

Nevertheless he felt very uncomfortable, driving to the little church on the outskirts of town. He parked well out of the way, to leave parking spaces for more worthy attenders than him.

* * *

Lily and Ethan were silent, sitting in the intimidating black car with the funeral director who had made their lives so much more bearable this last two weeks. Respectfully, she also remained quiet.

Ethan felt sick, knowing that the coffin behind them contained his brother. At times, his relationship with Cal had been strained to say the least, but it was still horrific to know that his brother was gone, never to return. He clenched a fist in anger. Scott Ellisson was walking the streets of Holby as a free man. He could commit exactly the same crime tomorrow, tear another family out of their reality and force them into a dark new one. A furious tear escaped his eye as the hearse pulled up at the church. He made no effort to wipe it from his face; it wasn't until he felt the touch of Lily's delicate fingertip that he realised he'd cried at all. She worked the tension from his fist, and turned to look at him solemnly.

"Ready?"

"No, but then, I'll never be. Let's go. Into battle." He squeezed her hand, and her expression told him that she had recognised his discreet reference to Sherlock.

As the coffin was lifted from the car, Ethan spotted something amiss. "Claire," he said urgently, getting the attention of the funeral director. "Those flowers - I've never seen them before. We didn't choose those."

On the top of the coffin, the words 'Be More Cal' were spelled in blue and white flowers. These had been chosen by Ethan after much deliberation, and after Lily's reassurance that these words would not cause offence, rather mild amusement on an otherwise dark day. But Claire was carrying a much smaller arrangement in her arms. Fragrant white lilies, their orange stamens standing out wildly in a sea of white petals and an ocean of black mourning clothes. Carefully arranged around the base of the lilies, there were cream-coloured roses and white carnations.

"These here? They were ordered late last night, from abroad… Michigan, I think. Lady from Liverpool, if I remember rightly."

Lily couldn't help herself bursting into tears. She turned and cried into Ethan's shoulder.

Unsteadily, he asked whether they had been sent by Zoe Hanna.

"Yes, that's her. She was terribly apologetic that she left it so late." Claire balanced the flowers on one arm, like a waitress, in order to reach into her pocket for a small white card. "Here, she left a message for you both."

Ethan read it first, then whispered it to his wife. "Ethan and Lily, my deepest condolences. I'm so sorry for your loss. I'll be in touch. Love always, Zoe."

* * *

Standing some way back from everyone else, Dylan was startled by the sudden appearance of someone he once knew very well.

"Rita." He said her name slowly, hardly daring believe that she was here. Part of him wanted to hug her. Part of him wanted to kiss her - he'd missed that. A large part of him wished that they were meeting again under better circumstances. And part of him was terrified that she'd find out the truth about how Cal had died. Then he remembered that he was just staring at her. "I - no - it's… It's probably inappropriate to say that it's nice to see you, considering the circumstances." But it was nice to see her again. It was better than __nice__ , and he wished he could tell her. Instead, he did what he'd always detested. Small talk. "So, how is London treating you?"

"It's treating me fine, yeah. It's busy, and… well, busy. Everywhere. I've been lucky though, the E.D. I'm working in now has let me into their team dynamic really easily."

"I'm pleased for you, truly." Being pleased for her falling on good times in London did not detract from the fact that underneath it all, he had missed her a lot. He understood why she had left Holby - after her ex-husband found out where she was, there was no way she could stay. He couldn't have expected her to stay in a place where she didn't feel safe any more. But he missed her smile. He missed the way she seemed to catch him before anything went wrong in his head. She was a bright ray of light, except now that light was absolutely out of his reach.

If Rita was surprised by the fact that Dylan chose to sit right at the back of the church, where he was less likely to be seen,the she didn't show it. He managed to contain his own surprise that she chose to sit with him, instead of with her old nursing team.

* * *

The service was simple but touching. Lily was astounded that Ethan stood to read Cal's eulogy: she had known it was coming but she had wondered whether he would have been able to bear it. But he read from his paper smoothly, only pausing twice to recover himself. He said everything that needed to be said, holding back where he had to but letting loose a few stories from his and Cal's childhood that even Lily had never heard.

When Ethan reached a point of describing being an adult sibling to Cal, Lily unintentionally let out a loud sob.

"Will and Lizzie aren't here today, but it seems fitting to mention something that I think shows exactly who Cal was, and why we will always have a gap in our lives without him. Caleb was an incredible uncle to our children, although he didn't have long to try. He never once forgot Will's birthday, and I have no doubt that he would have done the same for Lizzie, later this week. And yet," Ethan half-laughed and half-hiccuped, "he feigned forgetfulness of my birthday for the last thirty years, minimum."

Dylan felt immensely guilty. Through his fault, a chasm had been ripped in this beautiful family. He had caused damage to them that might never be repaired. Although Rita was still next to him, wiping tears which had flowed with more ferocity since Ethan had begun speaking, Dylan knew he had to go.

"I'm sorry, I really can't stay here." His voice was barely more than a mutter, but Rita heard every word. She was alarmed - to her knowledge, Dylan was a close friend of Ethan and Lily. Why could he not stay to support them in this difficult time? Come to think of it, why had he positioned himself as far from them as possible? She didn't understand.

Out in his car, Dylan allowed himself to cry.

By the time everyone else was walking out of the churchyard, Cal's coffin having been lowered into the ground in drizzling rain, although Rita checked, Dylan's car was nowhere to be seen.

* * *

"Dr Keogh, what are you doing here?" Noel sounded confused, holding the reception phone away from his face to question why Dylan was striding across the department, still in his black funeral suit, undoing his tie and tucking it into his trouser pocket.

"I can do more good here, than I can there," came his abrupt response, although there was an undertone of deep hurt.


	11. Chapter 11

**Bit of a shorter chapter tonight - I've ummed and arred about whether to end it or continue it - please don't hate me for the decision I made!**

* * *

The morning after the funeral, Ethan was due in work at eight o'clock.

Lily wanted to tell him that she didn't think this was a fair arrangement. Deep emotional wounds had been opened up by the funeral, although he was insistent that throwing himself back into work would clear his head more than spending time at home. More pressing for Lily was that she didn't feel ready to get both children up, washed, dressed, breakfasted and out of the house by herself, and then get to work as well.

The moment she sat down to finally eat her own breakfast, a clutch of envelopes flopped onto the doormat. She got up to bring them in at once. A brown, NHS-marked one stood out from the rest. She opened it gingerly, then wished she hadn't. It stated clearly that she had missed her last two physiotherapy appointments, and that if she missed a third, she would have to rejoin the waiting list for treatment. If Ethan saw this letter, she would have to admit that things were not going well. Her recovery wasn't as it should have been, but there were so many things that came higher on her list of priorities. Ethan's grief, Will's confusion, Dylan's mental health, Lizzie's birthday tomorrow. She pushed the letter into the bin, ensuring it was well-hidden.

Lily thought she might have regressed in her recovery. Something had gone wrong yesterday afternoon, when they had escaped from drinks in the Hope and Anchor under the excuse that they needed to pick up Will and Lizzie. Lily kept telling herself that it was merely from crying so much; she must have exhausted muscles used for breathing and this had to be why every breath was now followed by discomfort not far from that which she had experienced in the days following her accident. It would all die down in a matter of days. There was no reason to call in sick to work, because it would simply worry people who had no need to worry about her.

Despite its logistical difficulty, Lily walked into work with fifteen minutes to spare.

* * *

"Lily – Dr Hardy? Have you got a minute?"

It had taken Lily a while to become used to hearing her title attached to her married name. For a long time, there had been only one Dr Hardy in the department, and now that there were two, people mostly just called out hers or Ethan's first names, if they wanted their attention. But Iain looked like this was a conversation he'd rather not have; perhaps he had chosen to use Lily's full title to put some distance between himself and this situation.

"Of course, Iain, is everything okay?" Lily replied, stepping back from the computer screen in front of her.

Iain put his hands in his pockets, rounding his shoulders. "Yeah, I'm fine. Can we do this somewhere else, please?"

Lily nodded in response and allowed herself to be led out to the front of the hospital – not before she had caught Ethan's arm and discreetly alerted him to the fact she was going outside. It was an unpleasant necessity, one which was grating on Ethan more than anyone, today. If there had been anyone else close by, she would have elected to speak to them instead.

Despite the time of year, a cool wind blew outside, leading Lily to fold her arms across her chest. A powder-grey blouse with cap sleeves was fine, when rushing about inside a busy A&E, but not outdoors. She and Iain had not spoken since her accident (and she had it on fair authority that she'd been a dreadful patient, although it was now so far after the fact that she couldn't possibly apologise.)

"Look, Lily, I just wanted to say that I really am sorry for what happened. You know, with Gem, and that."

Lily let out a breath of relief. If that was all this was about, then that was fine. "Iain, you really don't have to apologise for that! If it helps you, then of course I forgive you. It wasn't your fault, and I don't even blame Gem. It was just… a collection of circumstances, and I happened to be on the receiving end of them."

Iain half-smiled. He nodded, then looked up at the sky for a second. "You doing okay then?"

Lily decided that it was wiser to lie than to tell the truth. "Just fine, thank you." She was about to ask if Gem was also all right, when a voice started pouring through Iain's radio at what sounded like a rate of three hundred words a minute.

"3006 to control, received, we'll be there soon as." Iain looked back at Lily. "That's my cue, I guess I'll see you again shortly," he said, before taking off at a run to get into the ambulance.

* * *

Exactly thirty minutes later, Lily had almost given up hope of being able to take Iain's patient as soon as they arrived. After her conversation with him, she was keen to prove to him that she was back up to scratch. She had been hovering with half an eye on the front doors for ten minutes and was aware that she probably looked like she'd lost the plot.

Suddenly, she heard the doors open and she ran towards Iain and Jez, something which she instant regretted, because the impact of her heavy steps caused a needle-sharp pain in the bottom of her chest. She felt blood pounding in her skull: the beginning of a dehydration headache, no doubt.

Slightly breathlessly, she dismissed anyone's concerns for her and said, "I've got this one, what's happening?"

Iain raised an eyebrow, and looked at Jez questioningly before starting his handover. "Okay, this is Verity Alcott, thirty-four years old. She was the passenger in a car struck by a van travelling at approximately four-zero miles per hour – her mother, Angeline Mayhew, sixty-seven, was driving but appears to be uninjured –"

"I __am__ uninjured!" Angeline insisted, walking quickly behind them to keep pace with the paramedics and her daughter. "Just look after my daughter, please!"

Duffy came to take Angeline to cubicles as Lily reassured her. "Mrs Mayhew, we will do everything that we can. Iain, go on?" She breathed levelly in the hope that her light-headedness would fade. "Ethan, I need you, please," she said as they passed him.

"Patient has sustained multiple injuries. Tib/fib fracture on the left side, query fracture collarbone on the right," Iain recited. "Possible internal bleeding due to a faulty seatbelt. You also need to know that the airbag was not deployed. Patient's head struck dashboard, urgent CT required. GCS of ten, BP's in her boots. Sats of ninety-six per cent, on oxygen."

By this time, they had reached resus. "Bay four please, thanks Iain, Jez."

Ethan's face was the very definition of anger. Lily was frustrated by his attitude, because she knew that it this point in time there was only ever a single cause of his feeling like that. "Ethan, I do not have time for your petty feud right now! Concentrate on the patient, please. Robyn, I need LFT's, U's and E's and venous blood gases."

Robyn looked slightly shocked, but did as she was told. She had never seen Lily and Ethan interact with each other in this way.

"He's been discharging my patients," Ethan grumbled.

Lily knew at once to whom he was referring, and she definitely did not have time for this. His phrasing and delivery had sounded so petulant that she could easily draw comparisons between her husband and her four year old. "Ethan, either put it to one side, or get out and send someone else in here, in your place." She rubbed at her forehead. Her rising frustration had increased her rate of respiration, and she could feel her hands tingling.

Ethan apologised immediately, focusing on the patient. Despite the tension between them, it felt good to be working so closely alongside Lily again. For both of them it was comfortable familiarity. Where with other colleagues they would have maintained physical distance, they didn't have to with each other. Working around each other took on a whole new meaning. While Ethan was working on maintaining Verity's airway, Lily could stand on tiptoe to lean right over him, adjusting the saline on the drip stand.

Standing on tiptoe and stretching upwards was a mistake. Lily felt as though her insides had torn in half. She opened her mouth to tell Ethan that she needed to get out, when he spoke first.

"She's crashing, I've lost output. Start compressions." It was mechanical, an unfortunate normality of working in an emergency department.

Lily hesitated momentarily, and Robyn stepped forward, sensing that Lily was ill-at-ease with how events were unfolding. "I'll do it."

"No, Lily is perfectly capable." Ethan's voice was sharp, and Lily felt her eyes prickle with tears. She couldn't say a word to him about this now, not now. "Come on!"

Lily pulled at the collar of her blouse anxiously, before stepping up and pumping furiously at her patient's chest, causing an eruption of raw pain in her own. __Please, please let this work,__ she willed silently. She hoped more than anything that there would not be more than one round of compressions required. But this round ended with little success, and Ethan made no move to take her place. As she started the second round, she started seeing stars. The realisation quickly dawned on her that she had missed at least one dose of her medication, the chaos around getting the children ready to leave the house having coupled with another busy shift. She was breaking more than she was fixing – she was staying here for selfish reasons, to prove herself, rather than for the good of the patient. That stung, but not as much as every breath stung, pulling at damaged muscle tissue and jolting bones that needed to be kept still.

She toppled backwards, wanting nothing more than to breathe deeply to release the tension of her racing heart.

"Lily, what are you doing?" Ethan asked, stepping past her without looking at her quickly paling face.

"Lily, are you okay?" Robyn sounded concerned. Lily didn't look well at all.

"I need to – I need some fresh air –" Ethan still wasn't listening to her, even though she was swaying slightly on her feet. "Ethan, I need to get out, I think I'm going to faint."

Ethan turned around momentarily before he spoke abruptly. "I can't just leave! Get yourself out – you're putting the patient at risk."

Lily stumbled out of resus.

Every breath burned in her chest, making her head spin and an unusual sensation of distance ripple through her mind. Her cheeks were tingling now too, to match her hands. Luckily, no-one was looking at her. She needed to find somewhere quiet: somewhere that she could sit patiently with her head between her knees until this god-awful wooziness subsided and her pulse calmed enough for her to get on with the shift. Pain relief. That was all she needed. Unnoticed, she made her way to her locker and clumsily unlocked it to retrieve the box of pills. It shocked and scared her that she was so afraid of going back to work and yet was carrying on as if this was her only goal. Carrying on as normal meant returning to holding up this façade, mediating petty arguments and pretending that she was fit to be in the building. The longer this feeling went on, the longer her vision continued to cloud, the more she realised that she shouldn't be here. And yet she didn't want to be at home, either.

A sudden thought cut through the dizzy fog. She'd overheard Dylan, on her way into resus, saying that he was accompanying a patient to CT. He might still be there. He would help her. He might not tell Connie; he might help her keep going. Surely he would not send her home.

Home meant the physical difficulty of childcare. Home meant being constantly overwhelmed with waves of grief because home had been the place of funeral arrangements. Home meant coming back to a silent, empty house after Cal's characteristically raucous wake.

Lily was nearing CT now, running one hand along the wall beside her as she walked. At the sound of a door, at the end of the corridor, swinging shut, she thought she might throw up. Her mind was clouding now, with pain, nausea and crippling dizziness.

Lily's body finally gave up the fight. She slipped unconscious and fell, almost in slow motion, down the wall to the cold, linoleum floor.


	12. Chapter 12

**Back to long chapters again, it would seem! An emotionally wrought one, for which I will only partially apologise. It serves a purpose, I hope! please leave me a review to let me know what you think xx**

* * *

It was hot and stuffy in the CT room. Dylan, already on high-alert due to a threatening wave of anxiety, was feeling the heat more than either the radiographer or the CT technician. At the earliest possible opportunity, he excused himself from the room.

* * *

He was stopped in his tracks by the sight of Lily, her legs folding beneath her like a doll, fainting in the corridor.

"No, no, no," he said under his breath, rushing forwards to her. Her eyes were already fluttering open sluggishly. She mumbled something completely incomprehensible. "It's alright, Lily, I've got you." he said, hoping he sounded reassuring, although in truth he had no idea what was happening.

A small box of pills lay on the floor next to Lily's left hand. His hands shaking, Dylan examined the foil sheet. Not a single tablet was missing. He read the label three times. __Oh, Lily, why do you do this to yourself?__ he thought. "Can you hear me?" he asked clearly.

"Yes," Lily replied. "Sorry. Please, don't…" She swallowed.

In her vulnerable and confused state, she was holding both arms around her chest. Dylan didn't need too many more clues than this. "There's no need for you to apologise. However, it might be easier if you don't try to speak."

"No - I need to… Don't tell Ethan."

"What? Let's not worry about that now." Dylan's anxiety had faded, and he was back in doctor-mode. "Stop trying to speak now, let me try and work out why you decided to greet the floor with your face." Lily groaned at his remark, but stopped quickly because that hurt too. She consented to allow him to examine her. "We're building up quite a track record of this, you and I. If you don't start taking better care of yourself, people might talk. It's not as if there's a queue of young women waiting to fall unconscious at my feet."

Lily let out a tiny laugh, but stiffened and frowned in discomfort a moment later. Dylan's hands felt strangely warm against hers as he checked her pulse. When he put one thumb on her eyebrows in turn, to shine a light into each eye, it was as though they were on fire. She flinched away from him.

"What's the matter?" he asked immediately.

"Your hands, they're so hot."

"Only because you're freezing. It's not a cold day, Lily, and your extremities are like ice." Infinite medical possibilities were circling in his mind and with each passing observation, he was whittling the list down. "I'm going to get a wheelchair, you're going to sit in it, and I'm going to put you in a cubicle. If Ethan's sees us, then I won't lie to him, and I think you understand why." He looked at her meaningfully. "But, if he doesn't see us, then I won't actively go looking for him." Lily tried to stand up, and he put both hands on her shoulders, trying to be firm while acknowledging the amount of pain she was in. "No, you're not getting up on my watch. And not when I go to get the wheelchair either, please."

The anxiety which had dissipated while he examined Lily made a re-appearance as he walked across the E.D. to claim an unoccupied wheelchair. He scrunched both hands into fists tightly and then released them. He did this a few more times. He couldn't do more damage to the Hardy family. He had to get this right.

Lily was relieved that they were not spotted by Ethan, and if anyone else saw them, they chose to turn a blind eye.

"Your sats are too low," Dylan remarked, having carried out more checks once she was on the bed in cubicles. "And your hands are still cold."

"Noted," Lily replied shortly. She was on edge: she hated being on this side of the doctor:patient conversation, especially when there was so much riding on her being well.

"It's usually me doling out unhelpful comments," he said, checking her stats a second time. "I'm serious; every inch of you is under-oxygenated."

Lily noticed him checking her stats, and narrowed her eyes, scrutinising his actions. "Don't let the panic come down on my account." Her voice was barely more than a whisper. This was not entirely down to her desire not to be heard by anyone walking past.

"I'm not," Dylan snapped. "I'm trying to work out what's wrong with you!" As an afterthought, he apologised for his manner of speaking. He put an oxygen mask on her face and reminded her not to speak. "I'm going to ask you some questions, and I __only__ want you to nod or shake as appropriate."

"Were you treating a patient when you started to feel unwell?"

Lily nodded, then appeared to think a little harder, and shook her head.

"Right, hold up fingers to tell me how many days you've been like this."

Lily held up one finger.

"So something happened yesterday?"

 _ _Yes__.

"After the funeral?"

 _ _Yes__. Lily pulled the mask away from her face. "This would be easier if I just told you that I tripped and fell onto the corner of the bed."

Dylan looked up at the ceiling. "And you didn't think to tell anyone about this?"

"I didn't think it was going to be important."

"Well it's important now. You said you were treating a patient, was it in cubicles?"

Lily shook her head.

Dylan dreaded the answer she was going to give him to the next question. If she'd been feeling off-peak she shouldn't have been anywhere near the department, never mind - "Resus?"

Lily closed her eyes for a second, embarrassed to nod her head.

"What were you doing? Don't - don't answer that, it's not a yes or no question."

Lily removed the mask for a second. "You know I'll be fine, don't you? I bounce, remember?" She was referencing something she'd said a long time ago. When she'd first made friends with Dylan, it had been about a year after her amputation, and one day he'd wondered aloud how she'd managed to survive the surgery, considering the blood loss from her legs and the onset of septicaemia from her ruptured appendix. She'd jokingly remarked, _"_ _ _I bounce,"__ something that it seemed apt to remind him of at the present moment. Back in the present, she let out a breath, unsteadily. "The patient crashed."

"Were you doing compressions?"

Lily nodded.

"Bullseye. I wish you'd stop concealing your medical emergencies." He examined her chest carefully. "Between falling last night, and trying to save other people before yourself, you've got yourself a small pneumothorax for your troubles. I don't think you'll need a drain but you're going to have to stay here under obs. And I'm not finished with the questions yet, either. Were you alone, when it all started to go pear-shaped?"

Lily shook her head.

Dylan bit the inside of his bottom lip. "Was Ethan there?"

Lily nodded.

She wanted to explain why this was difficult for her, but she couldn't. As a wife, she was meant to want Ethan here, she was supposed to need him to look after her.

"Your sats aren't improving as I'd like them to. Be honest, are you still light-headed?"

Lily nodded, feeling immensely stupid.

"Still in pain?"

She nodded again.

"Hold up a number out of ten."

At first, Lily rolled her eyes.

"I'm not kidding. Please?"

Lily held up six fingers, then put up a seventh.

"Where?"

She pointed to the bottom of her chest, then gestured from the base of her throat down to the bottom of her ribs.

Dylan thought for a moment. "When did you last take a deep breath? Yesterday?"

Lily considered her situation. She nodded, but from her uneasy expression Dylan deduced that perhaps she hadn't been breathing correctly for a bit longer than a day.

"You are quite honestly one of the worst patients I have ever come across." He checked her temperature. It was raised. Her hands were still cold. "Have either Will or Lizzie had a cold lately?"

Lily nodded. "Only a couple of days each, though. They're fine."

" _ _They__ haven't got broken ribs. I'm going to run a couple of tests, and then I'm going to send Ethan in here while I wait for them to come back. You've probably got a chest infection. Did you read the paperwork you were given, when you were discharged? Actually, did you listen at uni, when you were taught the consequences of shallow breathing and not attending physio for rib fracture patients?" That last part was a guess, but from the way Lily's cheeks burned, he knew he was correct.

"Other things, other people were more important."

Dylan sat on the end of the bed. He looked at her, not as his patient, but as his friend. She looked tired, drained, exhausted. "You are always adamant that you are invincible, and you subscribe far too deeply to the philosophy of _'_ _ _if you want something doing correctly, do it yourself.'__ Right now, I think you need to accept that you are the most important person. Put yourself at the top of your to-do list. I'm going to prescribe you antibiotics and personally see to it that Connie signs you off sick for two weeks. I don't say this often and mean it too, but you are worth looking after. Take care of yourself. Please."

* * *

When Ethan stuck his head around the curtain, Lily felt relief wash over her as though she was sliding into a hot bath.

"I need a hug," she admitted, her bottom lip trembling slightly. She wasn't wearing the mask any more. "I've been dosed up with painkillers again, so it won't hurt."

Ethan sat on the bed with her. At first he took one of her hands. "Your hands are cold."

Lily laughed slightly. "So I've been told."

"I was so worried, I thought something dreadful had happened."

"No, I'm fine," Lily lied. "Just a chest infection. I'll be alright."

"If you're sure," Ethan said. He hugged her firmly. "I shouldn't have shouted at you, I'm sorry."

Feeling safe in his arms, Lily asked, "did you shout?"

"I raised my voice," Ethan admitted. "And I shouldn't have. It wasn't fair, especially as you weren't feeling well."

"I was being a drama queen." Lily shook her head to convince him of her lack of truth. "I shouldn't have said that I was going to faint. I'm fine, I'm just on antibiotics." She bit her lip to hold back her upset. She wanted to be honest, but she couldn't bring herself to put herself first. It was ingrained in her geneticmake-up, to cast her own needs aside in favour of others', especially those whom she loved.

* * *

In the end, Connie did sign Lily off work for two weeks, appalled that yet again, Lily had let her own health get so far out of hand. To Lily'srelief Connie said nothing of her fainting episode as she was discharged from the E.D. late that afternoon.

* * *

"Ethan," Lily whispered, tilting her head back into his chest. They were sitting on the sofa in their living room, her between his legs, leaning against him. The clock was moving towards half past six, and Lily felt very weak as she made her request. "I know I said I'd do bath times this week, but I just can't tonight. I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry! It's all going to be all right. I'll sort it. Don't punish yourself for it." He kissed the top of her head, before gently pushing her to sit upright and working himself free. Sitting cross-legged on the carpet beside Will, he started putting a few pieces of lego back in the box. "Right, young man. What about we get this lego all put away, and sort out a bath for Lizzie, and then when she's in bed, we can get all of the bath toys out in one go?"

Lily made her way upstairs shortly after Ethan took the children upstairs for their baths. She heard them splashing about and playing in the water, and her chest hurt with a pain that was nothing to do with the infection in her lungs or the broken bones under her skin. She wanted to be the one having fun with them like this: she'd spent precious little positive time with them since her accident. She made a vow to herself that tomorrow, no matter what, she was going to read to Will before he went to bed, and she was going to play with Lizzie.

Quite intentionally, she kicked the corner of the bed in frustration before lying down heavily on top of the covers. __Just stop,__ she thought. __Just stop hurting.__ She was emotionally drained by the events of the day, and trapped by her refusal to tell Ethan the truth. Not for the first time, she considered whether her relationship would withstand the strain of this latest line of development.

* * *

She was dozing lightly when Ethan came in and lay beside her, waking her gently. For nearly a minute, they lay in silence, staring at the ceiling. Lily felt a lump rise in her throat.

"Are you asleep?" he asked, in a low voice.

"No," she replied. She was surprised to feel tears leaking down the sides of her face. They were so close, only a few inches apart, but the tension between them meant it may as well have been miles.

"I've been thinking, and I think I need to say sorry to you."

"To me? Whatever for?"

"For being nasty." In his heart of hearts, Ethan knew it was unkind to her for him to treat Dylan the way he was, in her presence. Perhaps he deserved everything he was getting, but maybe it wasn't right to drag Lily into this. "I think I've just found it really hard being back at work, and having to be in the same place as Dylan. I know that I just have to get on with it. I need your support."

Lily had followed what he was saying, until her uttered the word 'support.' She sat straight up and looked down at him. She was all too aware of Will and Lizzie being in bed, but she couldn't stay quiet. "MY SUPPORT? What more do you want from me? I don't know how much more I can give; this is killing me! I'm trying so hard to look after our children, I'm looking after you - so help me God, this isn't why I'm angry with you. I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. I'm doing what I __want__ to do, because being married to your best friend means holding them up when things go wrong, and I know that things have gone so wrong for us. I'm sorry for what has happened to us, but I will not apologise for picking up the pieces, because as your wife that's what I do. If it was the other way around I know you'd do the same because that's just how things are between us."

Ethan looked stunned, and more than a little hurt. He sat up opposite her, cross-legged on the duvet. He took both of her hands, but she wrenched them away in her tirade of self-destruction.

Lily wanted to stop, she knew she was destroying what little of the proximity between them that still existed. But if she didn't keep going, she'd keep it bottled up forever and that would only make things worse. "If my support means I have to hate someone who cares deeply about me and whom I care about in return then I'm not certain that you can have it. He is relapsing with anxiety because of everything that's happened, and I need to be there to look out for him. I'm looking out for everyone but myself. I haven't attended my physio appointments and I'm about to be taken off the treatment list because of it. I've been too embarrassed to admit that I'm in pain to ask anyone to check me over. I'm hurting now, and not that it matters but I could cry, as much as I could throw up violently or just sleep for a week."

"Lily, I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry." He wiped tears from her cheeks.

"I collapsed in work today," she said simply, letting down the last of her protective walls as she released the secret she had kept from him all afternoon.

Ethan put a hand over his mouth. He hadn't realised what a wedge there had been between them, until this moment of clarity.

"And what killed me the most was that I was too afraid to tell you what happened because I thought you had too much on your plate anyway." She was crying, hard, and knew she could only do so because of the painkillers she'd been prescribed as a last resort, and the antibiotics at work in her system. Clumsily, she rubbed under her eyes.

"I will never be too busy for you," Ethan said, feeling as though his own emotions had been cut to the quick by this sudden explosion. He looked down at his lap. "I hoped you knew that, and I'm sorry that I made you feel that I wasn't always here for you."

"I couldn't tell you, because…" Lily pressed her lips together hard, breathing through her nose. "Because it was Dylan who found me, passed out in a corridor near CT. He's the one who made sure that I was okay, and that I would continue to be okay afterwards." Finally, she accepted Ethan pulling her into his arms to cry herself out. He stroked her hair and whispered soothing words in her ear.

"Lily, I knew that it was him. I wasn't happy, but I had to accept that in that moment he was the doctor in charge of your care. I was terrified, because I thought something awful would happen to you like it did to Cal. But it didn't. You will be absolutely fine. Right now, you are tired, and sore, and everything feels like an enormous problem that you can never ever overcome. I promise you that in the morning, it will be brighter. You need to get some sleep."

Lily sniffed, then hiccuped, then laughed slightly. "It's half past seven. I can't go to bed."

"I think, on this occasion, you may be excused from the adult rulebook." He kissed her forehead, then helped her change into her pyjamas. He adjusted her pillows and made sure she was comfortable, before drawing the curtains and lying down beside her. He reached for her hand, and was immeasurably relieved when he felt her fingers close desperately around his palm.


	13. Chapter 13

**Hi :) I probably won't be updating now until Sunday, as I'll be away from the internet over the weekend. I willendeavor to have a chapter written for Sunday evening though (don't hold me to that with an angry mob or pitchforks!) A bittersweet chapter tonight, some fluff (as promised to theverystuffoflife) but what is this story without a little bit of angst and sadness? As always, thank you so much to my reviewers, I'm truly grateful for your feedback and encouragement x  
**

* * *

Lily woke up feeling at peace.

And then she remembered what day it was.

"Ethan? Ethan!" she whispered urgently.

He was sitting up in bed already, reading _The Hobbit._ It was a stroke of luck that his day off this week fell today. He had already pre-empted her worries spectacularly. "It's all okay, trust me."

"No, it isn't!" Lily sat up herself now, which for the first time in a while, caused her less pain than the preceding day. "It's our daughter's first birthday and I was too busy being ill to do anything!"

"You glossed over the crucial part of that sentence," Ethan said, putting a bookmark between the pages in front of him. " _Our_ daughter. When you fell asleep last night, and the two monsters were also asleep, I went back out, and sorted everything. There is cake in the fridge, and a very grandiose candle shaped like a number one, next to the fruit bowl.

"You went out singularly for the purpose of birthday cake?"

"Caterpillar shaped. She'll love it, and if she decides that she doesn't love it, I know you will. And besides, birthdays have more than cake and candles. I sorted everything," he repeated, a hint of pride in his voice.

Lily lay back on her pillow. "Thank you. You are brilliant." She had missed this feeling of dependence, missed knowing that she could rely on Ethan to pick up where she left off. After the tumultuous affair that was the previous evening, the space between them was back to being comfortable and calm.

"Now you've worried about everybody else, how are you feeling this morning?"

Lily sighed. "Not perfect," she said.

"You don't have to be." He put his book on the bedside table and stood up, with the intention of going downstairs to make tea and toast. For something special like a birthday, it was worth getting a bed full of crumbs and splodges of jam, to have the whole family together in one place. It would put a spanner in the works of the neat routine they had worked out, of laundering and changing sheets on a Sunday afternoon, but that didn't matter. He walked around to Lily's side of the bed and kissed her gently, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear, from where it had worked itself free of the plait she had tied it in yesterday.

They were interrupted by Will, standing in the doorway making sounds of disgust. "Stop kissing! It's Lizzie's birthday and I made a card for her, at nursery." He held it out to show them.

"It wasn't just you, making sure everything was set for today," Lily said, smiling and squeezing Ethan's hand.

* * *

When Ethan came back upstairs, carrying a tray with two cups of tea, Lizzie's bottle of milk and a glass of orange juice for Will (who walked in front of him carrying a plate of toast and jam) he was also armed with a number of envelopes. After setting the tray down, Ethan went to wake up the birthday girl, while Lily inspected the envelopes. One was addressed to Lizzie in Ethan's handwriting. Another was printed messily by Will. The third had been written neatly by Lily's mother. It was the fourth and fifth that led to trouble.

Lily sat with her daughter on her knee, letting Lizzie pull each card out of its envelope, in between bites of toast. Of course, the one-year-old didn't fully understand what was going on, but her wide smile proved that she was enjoying all the fuss and bright colours. Lily suspected that she was also enjoying not having smears of jam wiped off her chin.

The fourth envelope was a vibrant shade of yellow, and addressed in a hand which Lily could recognise instantly. The birthday card inside was simple, but Lily was nonetheless touched by the effort that Dylan had gone to.

"That was kind of him," she said to Ethan as she propped the card up with the rest.

Ethan made a sound that showed him to be less than convinced.

"So he _is_ still friends with us!" Will said triumphantly, almost dropping the piece of toast in his hand.

"Of course he is," Lily said, hoping to temper the fact that Ethan's face looked like thunder. Whatever he had said last night in trying to comfort her, it was evident that he hadn't forgiven Dylan yet. "I think he's just been very busy and that's why you haven't seen him. You've seen how busy it is in the hospital, haven't you?" she said sweetly.

"Hm," Will agreed. "I hope we see him soon. We could take Alice to run on the park, she'd like that."

"She would, and I'm sure you'll be able to do that soon." When Will was distracted looking at the fifth envelope, she looked at Ethan imploringly. "Stop it," she whispered. "This is neither the time nor the place."

"Daddy?" Will asked, examining the final envelope. "What's this one? It's not written like the rest. Is it still for Lizzie?"

Ethan took the card out of his son's hands gently. He looked at the address, then turned the envelope over to the back. It had been delivered by one of those online companies which specialised in personalised cards. It was anyone's guess who it could be from. There was an order date printed on the back. Nearly two months ago.

"Someone was feeling organised, they ordered it two months ago," he informed Lily as he unstuck the envelope. "There you go Lizzie, can you get this one too?" He held out the envelope to her, and allowed her to grab the card with both hands. She giggled excitedly.

Lily looked over the top of Lizzie's head. The front of the card was emblazoned with a birthday message, and printed up with pictures that brought tears to Lily's eyes. She hardly dared believe it was true; she couldn't open the card yet.

In the centre of the front, there was a picture taken on the day Lizzie was born. It showed Ethan sitting in one of the hospital chairs, with Will on his lap, 'holding' his new baby sister. Lily knew exactly who had taken this photograph. This one was bordered by a collection of others – Lily's favourite was a fairly recent one: it was clearly a selfie, showing Lizzie sitting up in her pram, with Will and Cal on either side of her, pulling ridiculous faces.

Sure enough, when Lily opened the card, it read: _Dear Princess Lillibet, Happy 1_ _st_ _Birthday, Lots of love from Uncle Cal._

Ethan noticed the change in Lily's face at once. "Let me see?" he said uncertainly.

Lily passed him the card, then covered both her eyes with her hands. She pressed her fingertips over her closed eyes. Everything about that card was perfect, except for the fact Cal wasn't here to know how well he'd done choosing it.

"Oh," he said, letting out a long breath as he took in each photo in turn, then the writing inside.

"I helped," Will said, looking very pleased with himself. "I had to keep it a secret though, I couldn't tell anybody!"

"And you did a fantastic job," Lily said, only slightly tearfully. She moved Lizzie so she was sitting up beside her, rather than on her knees, and pulled Will into her arms. "Well done, you kept your secret so well!" She had to keep this positive, she couldn't let him know that his father was emotionally freefalling as a result of seeing this card.

"Um, I'm just going to – um –" Ethan got off the bed and headed for the door.

"It's all right," Lily said. "We'll come downstairs shortly, and then we can get on with our day."

* * *

That afternoon, Ethan took both Will and Lizzie down to the beach. Although Lily wanted to go, to spend time with them, she knew that she needed and would appreciate the rest in a quiet house. Ethan made sure that she had everything she might need, before leaving her on the sofa, propped up on a pile of cushions.

"You will call me, if anything goes wrong?" he said fastidiously.

Lily grinned at him. "If anything goes that badly wrong, I'd call work before I called you." She stuck her tongue out at him. "Of course I will. Now go and have a good time!"

* * *

Lily logged into her skype account for the first time in a very long time. There was a message from Zoe, which had been waiting in her inbox since yesterday lunchtime.

 _Hi Lily, I just wanted to check the flowers made it to the funeral on time. If you need a chat, you know how to get hold of me. Zoe x_

Her fingers lingered over the keyboard. And then, as though to universe was telling her what to do, the icon next to Zoe's name turned green. Lily hovered for a second, then clicked _start video call._

It was so comforting to see Zoe's face, and hear her cheery greeting. Her genuine kindness was something Lily would not forget in a hurry.

"It was very nice of you to send flowers, Zoe, thank you," Lily said, not knowing where to start with all the things she really wanted to say.

"I had to do something," Zoe replied. "Seeing as I only found out what had happened on Monday afternoon, that was the only thing I could think of. Have you been all right – I mean, as all right as you can be, given the circumstances?"

Lily thought about her reply before she spoke, happy that Zoe was still the same as when she'd left Holby. "I think so," she began, knowing that her tone would be very telling. "I – I've been signed off work for another two weeks, so I'm feeling a bit sorry for myself. I'll be all right, you know me."

"Yes, I do. And I know that you'll work hard regardless of whether that means working yourself to the ground." Zoe raised an eyebrow, and examined Lily's reaction. "What do you mean, another two weeks?"

Lily froze. Did Zoe know anything that had unfolded in Holby of late, other than the news about Cal? She must do, if she'd been in touch with Dylan – and how else would she have found out about the funeral, if not from him? "Well, I was off for about a month after the accident –"

"Accident?" Zoe rolled her eyes. "Typical, that no-one would think this was information I might like to know!"

Lily knew then that Zoe could only be talking about Dylan, and equally she knew that there was information that she had to interject with. "Don't be cross with him. He hasn't had an easy time of it, since… Since everything that happened with Cal. I imagine he didn't tell you that he was the one to find him?"

Zoe covered her mouth with her hand. "No, he didn't. Is he alright – he's not relapsing at all, is he?"

Lily met Zoe's gaze and knew exactly what the consultant was asking about. "You know that I want to say no, because you're three and a half thousand miles away and there's not much you can do. But the truth is, I don't know. I was barely back in the E.D. a week before I was sent home again so I can't tell. They're being awful to him, they all blame him." She lowered her voice to a whisper, even though she was alone in the house. "Even Ethan blames him for what happened, even though there was nothing anyone could have done."

"Right," Zoe said. Lily saw her check her watch and then decide that whatever it was, it could wait. "You need to start from the beginning."

"How long have you got?"

"Enough time, trust me. I've known Nick Jordan long enough for him to know that I'd make the world turn backwards to fix Holby E.D. He will definitely wait for me."

And so Lily told her everything. The fact that the man they all 'knew' to have stabbed Cal was walking the streets as a free man. Gem, the car accident, and prison. Her injuries, which had stolen quite enough of her time, thank you very much: three broken ribs, a cracked sternum and bruises everywhere else. A fight in the E.D. which had split the team into two very unequal sides, leaving Lily stranded in the middle. The funeral, during which Lily had it on good authority that Dylan had all of a sudden become too uncomfortable to stay. Her fruitless attempts to hold together her family, her marriage and her friendship with Dylan, which had culminated in collapsing outside CT with a small pneumothorax and a chest infection to boot.

"So while you've been trying to hold the entire E.D. on your shoulders, where has Connie been?"

"Trying not to let Sam Strachan take over everything. You know the saying 'fingers in too many pies'? At the moment, he is the human embodiment of it, and it's awful. He was the medical director and had all the consultants terrified they were going to lose their jobs. He's still in closer contact with Mr Hanssen than Mrs Beauchamp. And he has this dreadful habit of saying that he's 'filling the registrar vacancy' when every time he says it, I can practically feel Ethan's skin crawl."

"What was that about being back for less than a week? You're quite the fly on the wall, aren't you?" Zoe's turn of phrase may have been light, but her facial expression was anything but.

"The only perk of being quiet," Lily said, looking at the ceiling.

"I won't tell you to take better care of yourself, because I'll take a guess you've been told that about a dozen times in the last couple of days," Zoe said knowingly.

"Thank you."

"Is there anything I can do? I mean, what you really want to do is to ask me to sort out all these god-damned over-dramatic men in your life, isn't it?"

Lily's sigh was almost audible, as she ran a hand through her hair. "Yes." She knew there was nothing that Zoe could do from where she was. But it felt good to talk about it to someone with some distance (although this was debatable: Zoe might be in Michigan but her heart was clearly still in Holby, that much was obvious just from speaking to her.) It made Lily feel better, to hear that Zoe wanted to help. "Just, look out for Dylan. He won't come anywhere near our house now, for fear of leaving with a broken nose – don't laugh! I honestly though Ethan was going to punch him, when it all spilled over that first time!" If the situation wasn't so serious, she might also have found it entertaining that mild-mannered Ethan had finally found something to spark his inner fury. "I miss having you around at work, I really do." She'd never have been brave enough to say that to Zoe in a face to face conversation, so for once, she was grateful for the internet.

Zoe wished that she could reach through the screen and give the young woman in front of her a hug. She was trying so hard to hold everything together, but who was holding her in one piece? "Believe me, I miss being at home too."

That struck a chord with Lily. Zoe had left Holby about fourteen months ago, when Lily had been heavily pregnant with Lizzie, and the consultant had been in Michigan ever since. And yet she still called Holby 'home.' Home meant different things to different people though; it was usually tied to the strength of relationships built in a certain place. When Lily thought about it, Holby was 'home' for her too, more than her place of birth, anyway.

It might be home, but that didn't make it an easy place to be.


	14. Chapter 14

**Hope you enjoy this chapter - there's quite a big big flashback in the middle, in bold text. I hope it makes sense :) Leave me a review and let me know what you think x**

* * *

 _…_

 _Anyway, see you soon (hopefully!)_

 _Love, Rita_

Dylan closed his laptop with an abrupt snap, head spinning from what he'd just read. The correspondence from his former girlfriend had been unexpected and had taken him completely by surprise with his extreme emotional reaction to it. He had heard her voice leaking through the typeface – embarrassingly he had found himself imagining her reading it to him, her way of speaking was identifiable from her choice of words and her turns of phrase. Her email had worked loose a feeling of confusion. Did he still love her? He missed her deeply, especially now, what with all the nastiness at work and the way he could feel anxiety snaking tendrils around him and dragging him under. Was missing her the same as still having feelings for her?

A familiar sensation of panic was spreading outwards from Dylan's brain. It was all to do with that four-letter word she'd used to sign off. "Love" was a very strong word, and he knew he was overthinking it because she would have only meant it innocently but before he knew it he was bent double on the sofa wishing his lungs would allow him to take a breath. He was furious with himself, but panicking like this didn't leave space for anything except fear. Fear and fighting for breath. It was a fight with one winner. Dylan wasn't in control and he knew it. at the mercy of the monster that was pure panic, he was powerless to his pulse racing as though he was running repeated sprints and unable to stop a runaway train wreck of thoughts swirling in his head. Blood pounded in his ears. _Back in this sorry state, how pathetic. Grow up, this is all self-inflicted – if you'd been quicker, if you'd been a better doctor, Cal would still be alive and you wouldn't be wallowing in self-pity. You're ridiculous._

It was Alice's gentle whine from the front door which brought him finally back to his senses. He lifted his head from his hands and looked over to her, sitting against the door with an expression that he could read easily, even with a head slightly fogged by panic.

"I suppose we're going out then, small bean?"

Her tail wagged at once, slapping against the doormat in excitement.

* * *

 **One Year Ago**

 **"** **Thank you for a lovely evening, Dylan," Rita said, standing on tiptoe to brush a kiss across his cheek.**

 **"** **You're welcome," Dylan said, slightly abashed. "I… had a nice time too." It was only ten o'clock, but Rita was due to be in work at seven the following morning. Part and parcel of holding down a relationship while also maintaining the eternal third wheel that was Holby E.D. meant that they'd take any time together that they could, whether this meant breakfast, dinner, or coffee in the middle of a shift.**

 **It was turning dark as they talked for their last few moments of the evening. As usual, Rita promised that she would send a text to let Dylan know that she had got home safely, after he had kissed her goodnight. For someone as gruff and sarcastic as he was, he cared deeply about his girlfriend. This was a side to his personality that she was all too happy to keep to herself. Their blossoming relationship wasn't a secret in the E.D., but this didn't mean that anyone could understand the strong bond between the gruff consultant and the kind Clinical Nurse Manager.**

 **Forty minutes later, Dylan realised that he hadn't received her usual brief message. He tried not to worry; she had probably just forgotten and gone to bed. But he couldn't shake the thought that something had happened. She** ** _always_** **made sure to send that message, because she'd do anything to alleviate unwanted anxious thoughts.**

 **At midnight, he was getting ready for bed himself when there was a sudden commotion out on the deck of the boat, followed by urgent, non-stop knocking at the door. Hardly showing the fear that he felt, he put on his dressing gown, drew himself up to his full height and headed over to the door. Flicking on the soft lamps in the living room, he reassured Alice in a low voice as he walked past her bed.**

 **When he opened the door, he was stunned to see Rita standing outside, tears streaming down her face. He ushered her inside at once, making sure to triple-check the door was locked behind her. He turned around to look at her.**

 **She was pacing holes into his rug, arms folded across her chest, making no move to wipe away her tears although they'd worked channels into her previously perfect make up.**

 **"** **What happened? Are you hurt? What can I do?" Dylan said, not realising that he had asked a stream of questions without leaving time to answer any of them.**

 **"** **Stop," she said, her voice shaking although she was trying to claw back some control of the situation.**

 **"** **I'm sorry. What can I do?" he repeated, separating out a question she might be more willing to answer.**

 **Rita's lower lip trembled, and Dylan moved towards her. She looked into his eyes, and opened her arms, motioning that she needed a hug. A little uneasily, because he needed to be in possession of the facts, he took her into his arms. She rested her head on his chest. He felt her small body quake as she cried.**

 **"** **Did someone hurt you?" he whispered.**

 **He felt her shake her head. "I'm – I mean – I'll be okay."**

 **"** **But you're not okay now," he said, holding her slightly away from him. "Please, sit down, and – let me make tea, or something. Let me help."**

 **She nodded tearfully. Sitting down, she shed her jacket and her boots.**

 **When Dylan returned to her, putting two mugs on the coffee table in front of them, she unlocked her phone and passed it to him. Immediately, she turned her head as if she was ashamed to see the messages again. As he read them, they turned Dylan's stomach.** ** _Looks like you had a lovely date with your new man, Rita. Wouldn't it be a shame if he knew what you did, who you really are, and the lengths you went to, protecting someone like me? Wherever you go, whoever you're with, I will always be here, reminding you that you're the scum of the earth, just like me._**

 **"** **Who sent these?" Dylan asked, even though he knew the answer.**

 **"** **Who do you think?" Rita snapped, taking her phone back from him more forcefully than she meant to.**

 **"** **None of that matters, _Mark doesn't matter_** **. You know that I don't care about any of that other stuff. That's your past, and none of my business. What is my business, and what I care about, is you, here and now. He can't do this to you."**

 **Rita sobbed afresh. "But he can! He can, and he will! Look at – look at the message above that." She showed him. "He even knew where we were. He's always going to – he'll never leave me alone – I can never get on with my life!"**

 **Dylan turned around so he was sitting sideways on the sofa. He gently pulled Rita back so she was between his legs, lying against his chest. He took her hands in his own, massaging out the tight, stressed fists she was holding them in. "You can.** ** _We_** **will." He held her against him. "You can't go back home tonight, I don't want you to be by yourself."**

 **"** **I'm supposed to be in work at seven, I can't sleep like this, I can't think about carrying on like normal –"**

 **Dylan stroked the top of her arm, making soothing circles with his fingertips. "I know that I am the very worst person to say this, but –" he faltered, and felt embarrassed. "Try… try not to think about any of that."**

 **Rita's knees were drawn up to her chest. Suddenly, as if the Collie wanted to be in on the drama of the evening, Alice jumped up on the sofa and curled around Rita's feet. This raised a gentle laugh from the little blonde nurse.**

 **They stayed there until morning. Rita fell asleep first, exhausted by the triple-shift of work, an evening out, and the raw emotion of the night. Asleep, she finally seemed to have relaxed, the crease between her eyebrows gone but the tear marks down her cheeks still a glistening reminder of what had passed.**

 **In the fresh light of day, she was adamant that she was fit to work, so, perhaps against his better judgement, Dylan drove her home.**

 **"** **Do you want me to come in?" he asked. "I don't mind if you do, I'll just sit downstairs and wait, if that's what you want."**

 **"** **I don't need a guard dog," she said, plastering an uneasy smile onto her face that Dylan could see straight through. She was trying to make light of the situation to distract herself from what had happened.**

 **So he waited in the car for her to get ready, then drove her to work, glad that in her tired and distressed state, she had forgotten that he wasn't meant to be in the E.D. until ten.**

 **Two Weeks Later**

 **Rita was at his door again, this time not in tears, but with her face set in an expression of reluctant resolution.**

 **"** **I can't come in," she said, not meeting his eye.**

 **"** **Of course you can, the door hasn't moved, and Alice hasn't decided to bar you entry." He frowned slightly, trying to gauge her emotions without success.**

 **She let out a laugh that was purely an expression of air accompanied by a tiny smile, before her face returned to almost-neutrality. "Dylan, please, not tonight." She took a deep breath through her nose, and looked at the sky. The sun was setting, and the clouds were a vibrant shade of pink. "I… I came to say goodbye."**

 **"** **Goodbye? What do you mean – I'll see you tomorrow."**

 **She reached out and took his hand. "No, you won't." Rita pressed her lips together, and her mask of neutral emotion slipped. "I won't be in work tomorrow. I can't stay in Holby, Dylan. I have to go."**

 **"** **You're leaving?" He was utterly incredulous. "But – but you'll have to work a notice, 28 days minimum." He was quoting facts at her to disguise the rising panic in his system. He hadn't long since said goodbye to Zoe, and Lily would be out of action for quite some time with her new-born daughter. He couldn't lose more people, he couldn't do more goodbyes. For a solitary person, he hated the sensation of loneliness.**

 **But Rita just shook her head. "I worked the last two weeks as my notice."**

 **This was a punch in the stomach. "Two weeks? You've known you were leaving for – for two weeks?" He couldn't take it in. It couldn't be true. His mind was just playing tricks on him.**

 **"** **I'm sorry, I truly am. I couldn't stay, not after…" She looked at her shoes, unwilling and unable to recount what had happened after that last date.**

 **"** **But how did you manage to convince Connie? She's always such a stickler for rules and regulations."**

 **Rita squeezed his hand before letting go. "I just reminded her of her promise to cut me from the department, and told her that this was her best chance," she said, wiping tears from her cheeks. "I told myself not to get upset over this," she chastised. "I couldn't tell anyone, I didn't want them to know. But I couldn't go without telling you. I had to say goodbye." The word 'goodbye' came out as a partial cry. "I don't want to put you in danger. It might be a long time before I tell you where I've gone."**

 **Thinking practically, and concerned for her safety, Dylan asked: "what if he finds you again?" He put his hands at the tops of Rita's arms, as if in an attempt to hold her in one piece. He wasn't good with emotions, he wasn't good with people, and this broke almost every boundary he'd ever had.**

 **"** **Then I will have to keep running."**

 **At these words, Dylan pulled her into a tight hug, feeling her cries resonate through his chest.**

 **Rita let out a laugh, despite herself. "You never hug anyone."**

 **Dylan held her closer. "Well, I have to really like a person," he muttered, maintaining an inside joke he hadn't repeated in a long time. "I don't do teary goodbyes either. There's a first time for everything. Good luck, Rita. Stay safe." He pressed a kiss to the top of her head, his hands in her hair.**

 **When she stepped back, she looked at him with eyes overflowing with love and tears.**

 **Afterwards, Dylan would regret not walking her across the car park to her car. She was in a vulnerable state, after all.**

 **But then she was gone.**

* * *

Back to Present

Ten days after being sent home from work, Lily was nearly finished with her course of antibiotics, and had only a small cough to show for her chest infection. Finally, she was pain-free, and prepared to take Will down to the park, with Lizzie in her pushchair. This was more of a task than she remembered (but then, almost every other time she'd done it since Lizzie's birth, she'd had Ethan's help.)

Half-way to the swings, a familiar Border Collie bounded up to them, and Will dropped to his knees on the grass to play with her. Lily looked up from her son and saw that Dylan was about a dozen paces away. She smiled, and was a little concerned when he returned her a nod rather than a smile. He looked ill-at-ease with being out, and she wondered whether he was walking off the end of a panic attack, something which she knew he liked to do sometimes. When Dylan handed Will a tennis ball to throw for Alice, Lily was glad of the opportunity to speak to her friend.

"I'll hold back on the pleasantries, shall I?" she said, lifting Lizzie out of the pushchair and onto her lap.

"Hmm, that's probably for the best," Dylan replied. "It's all small talk and probable lies, anyway."

"Fine, then I'll cut to the chase. Is work getting easier?" For a moment, Dylan's face looked as though he would have preferred the small talk. Lily wanted desperately to know whether the bullying had calmed down. She wanted it all to have stopped, but she knew this was unlikely.

"Well, it isn't getting more difficult." This wasn't exactly a lie. It wasn't work that had forced him out of the boat today, in any case.

Lily bounced her daughter a little on her knee, eliciting an excited giggle from Lizzie. "That wasn't what I asked."

"Not directly, perhaps…"

Instead of focusing on the infuriation this response caused her, Lily instead concentrated on taking solace from Dylan's evasion of the question. When he was in a truly dark place, he was unable to form obtuse, sarcastic remarks. She wanted to delve deeper, to find out why he looked so on edge, but her baby on her knee clearly had other ideas. Lizzie started to cry, and put a hand into her mouth, rubbing her gums furiously.

"She doesn't sound too happy," Dylan said.

Secretly, Lily was touched that he could discern her daughter's cries. "Teething, I think." She extracted Lizzie's hand from her mouth for a moment. "But after Calpol, there's not too much that we can do."

Will came back over at that moment, Alice hot on his heels. Dylan clipped the lead back onto her collar. "I've missed you," Will informed Dylan clearly.

"Well, young man, the feeling is definitely mutual," Dylan replied seriously.

Lily snorted with laughter.

"What does that mean?" Will asked, his face straight.

Dylan broke a small smile, which Lily was pleased to see. "It means that I feel the same as you. I've missed you too," he clarified.

Will stood for a moment, looking between his sister and Dylan. "Can I sit on your knee please?" he asked politely.

Lily was immensely proud of his manners. She was equally proud of Dylan, who accepted without missing a beat, and lifted Will up to his lap. Balancing her daughter carefully with one hand, she reached into her bag with her free hand and asked, "Will, are you hungry?" It had been a few hours since lunchtime. Will nodded happily, and Lily pulled out a plastic box containing a gingerbread man. She gave half of it to him carefully.

"Did you bake that yourself?" Dylan asked the small boy.

Will laughed as if Dylan had said something highly entertaining. "No! Me and Mummy made them yesterday. I did the icing," he announced with pride clear in his voice.

"I see that," Dylan said, nodding. "It's very good, well done." He turned to Lily, when he was certain that Will was fully occupied. "You know, I think you might be in the running for Mother of the Year."

Lily rolled her eyes. "Hardly."

"I don't know, Tupperware organisation, baking, perfectly turned out children."

Lily returned to the conversation sharply to work. "Please be honest, when you're in work at the moment, what number are you on the scale?"

Dylan shot her an agonised look. It wasn't an unfair or unreasonable question, so he couldn't refuse to answer. "Six," he said at last.

Lily wasn't convinced. The way he'd walked over to meet them a few minutes ago had shown her he was at more than a 'six' on the arbitrary anxiety scale, and that wasn't even when he was anywhere near work. It made her feel thoroughly miserable, the injustice of the way he was being treated. "No-one should be able to toy with your mental health the way they're doing. Least of all health professionals who ought to know better."

Dylan shrugged. "They've got a point. I made a series of ridiculous mistakes. I continue to make ridiculous mistakes."

"They absolutely _do not_ have a point," Lily insisted. "You should go to Mrs Beauchamp."

"Oh yes, because telling tales with make my situation _so_ much better." His tone was rather too sharp, but he didn't have the words or the courage to admit he was wrong.

Lily brushed it off in any case. "I was thinking more because it's her team who are tearing into you at every opportunity. But if that's how you feel, I know that I won't be able to change your mind."

"It barely feels like Connie's department anymore, anyway," Dylan said bitterly. "Hanssen might be pulling the strings but I'll give you three guesses as to who his puppet it, causing havoc wherever he goes."

Lily's eyes widened in shock. "But I thought Sam was only filling in until we get a new registrar?"

"So did I," Dylan replied shortly. "So did everyone, until he announce that _he's_ doing the consultancy interviews to determine which of us is worthy of keeping our jobs. No prizes for guessing who he'll weed out first."

He sounded defeated; his forlorn tone told Lily without words exactly how he felt about his own worth. Lily was having none of it. "That is pure power-play and you know it. I hate it, you know that you unequivocally deserve to be in that place doing to job that you're good at! Maybe it's harsh, and for that I am sorry, but you can't let him get to you like that. If Hanssen knew that Sam's little exercise in self-importance was putting this much strain on key frontline staff –"

"– he'd tell you that I ought not to be getting so het up about necessary procedure."

"But it's not necessary procedure! Sam just wants to know who'll crack first, and that's not fair."

Dylan didn't want to retort by telling Lily that life in the E.D. wasn't always fair. He remained quiet, which perhaps was a worse decision, because it only added to her concern for him, and added to her contempt for the regime being implemented in her place of work.


	15. Chapter 15

Lily had rather hoped that on this return to work, the air in the department would not feel so hostile, but she was sadly mistaken.

The staff parted like the Red Sea not only for Dylan, these days, but for Sam too. His announcement about consultant interviews had not gone unnoticed by the masses – Lily remained appalled at the show of unity against Dylan, but it was admirable, the way that the team were also prepared to rally in favour of the rest of the consultants. It was a shame that they couldn't recognise the error in their ways: in so obviously and outwardly despising Dylan, they were presenting him as a walking target for redundancy and therefore supporting Sam's regime of uncertainty.

* * *

Lily was heading to the staffroom when she realised someone was walking closely behind her. The silence which also tailed her meant it could only be Dylan or Sam. She took another few steps forward and listened hard. The footfalls behind her sounded soft – which eliminated Dylan, whose shoes clicked on the tiled floor of the E.D. As she stopped and turned around, she announced her deduction, which successfully managed to unsettle Sam.

"Mr Strachan," she said calmly, although her insides were doing somersaults.

He frowned. "How did you know it was me?"

"I have two children under the age of five, Mr Strachan. I pride myself on having eyes in the back of my head." This was a safer choice of words than an explanation involving telling pairs of shoes apart by the noise they made on the ground. Lily was acutely aware of having an audience. Behind Sam, she could see most of the nursing team watching their exchange – to her relief, it appeared that they were on her side. She dared not look Duffy in the eye, because they older woman seemed to be highly entertained by Lily's comment about eyes in the back of her head.

"I suppose you've heard the news about the upcoming interviews?" Sam asked, moving on quickly. Perhaps he was also aware that their surroundings were very quiet and this only happened when conversations were being listened to.

Lily stiffened invisibly. "Yes." She wished they weren't being watched so closely. If she said one word out of line, she'd be in the firing line at the mercy of the team too.

Sam hadn't noticed Lily's malaise. "It would be nice to see you interviewing for a consultant's post, Lily."

Despite seeing that Connie and Elle had stuck their heads out of resus to see what was going on, Lily suddenly felt a rush of bravery. She caught Elle's eye for less than a second, as the consultant pulled on her stethoscope expectantly and leaned against the door frame, but Lily at once knew exactly what do say.

"Nice for whom, exactly?" Lily replied hotly. " _ _If__ I decided to interview, and __if__ I was successful, it would mean putting one of my colleagues out of a job. Colleagues who I value, and who should not have to worry about their jobs in the first place."

Sam stood in stunned silence. Lily didn't break eye contact with him – this was partly a tactic to make him listen to her, and partly a preventative measure: she wouldn't be able to stay focused on her point if she looked behind him to the people who were now watching them more avidly than before.

"Although I imagine putting good people out of a job is exactly what you're trying to do, I haven't yet even considered my Fellowship exams. I've been a little pre-occupied with recovering from significant trauma and a family bereavement." She pronounced the 't' at the end of 'bereavement' very clearly, before losing her nerve at last and turning away from him to hastily escape to the staffroom. She heard murmurs behind her, but she couldn't turn back around to them, to find out whether it was assent or dissent which was falling like rain.

* * *

"Show's over!" Connie shouted from the doorway of resus. "Mr Strachan, in here. Adult trauma call, ETA four minutes."

Sam was still bristling from his public dressing-down as he walked into resus.

Connie bit her lip to disguise her amusement, but she wasn't quick enough.

"I can't believe you think it's funny. She can't speak to me like that!"

Elle stopped what she was doing and was ready to jump to Lily's defence, when Connie got there first. "You are a registrar and so is she. Technically, she is your equal, and therefore she can speak to you however she likes." She raised one eyebrow as if challenging him to disagree with her.

"Surely you don't think she was right?"

"Sam, you've put a number of jobs on the line in this department, out of nowhere. She had no obligation whatsoever to spring to our defence, and yet she did so. And she did it rather well, too. Ofcourse I think that she was right." She returned to preparing the bay that she and Elle were working in, then checked her watch. "Like I said, adult trauma call, now with an ETA of less than two minutes. Discussion closed."

* * *

Lily shut the staffroom door behind her, then leant against it with her eyes closed.

"That was incredible."

Her eyes snapped open and she almost jumped out of her skin at the sound of Ethan's voice. "I think I should pay better attention, I had no idea you were there!" she said, laughing off her shock.

"You're shaking like a leaf, come here," Ethan said, walking over to her and enveloping her in a firm hug.

"Well, I'm usually nothing more than the department wallflower, and since Mr Strachan turned up, it would appear that I've found a voice." She let out a slightly giddy laugh, still running on adrenaline. "I think it might take some getting used to."

"I'm proud of you." And it was true, he was proud of his wife, who may have had regular worries about her performance and her confidence, but who never failed to stand up for what she believed in.

Those four words meant an awful lot to Lily. She leaned into Ethan's hug for a few seconds more, before stepping back, kissing him tenderly then standing up straight and smoothing her blouse, out of habit rather than because it was crumpled. "Back to work, I think."

* * *

Later that day, Lily was feeling less happy with her husband. She split up yet another argument between him and Dylan, in the nick of time too, before it spilled over and threatened to make itself known to the rest of the department.

"Ethan, go and take a patient from triage, that's what I was doing, and I'll finish up here with Dylan," she said firmly. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Dylan tapping the side of the bed. She hated that she was second-guessing herself, but was she seeing pure evidence of him slipping into anxiety's clutches, or was she just imagining it that way because she wanted to be able to help and that was all she knew how to do?

"What? Why?" Ethan asked, as if he didn't know already.

"Because if you don't, this argument is going to escalate to a point where Mrs Beauchamp can hear it from her office, and neither of us want that." She knew her tone was vaguely patronising, but she had to do something to remove her husband from this cubicle. When he was gone, she looked up at Dylan. "Okay?" she mouthed.

He nodded, then shrugged. He looked at the patient to avoid looking at Lily. "Dislocated shoulder, do you want to do it or shall I?"

Lily considered the patient, a robust man in his late fifties. He was wearing a football shirt and had come from a fight outside the local grounds. Lily hated football, or more accurately, she hated what football had the power to turn sensible people into. "All yours," she said, swapping places with Dylan so he could relocate the man's shoulder.

It was unfortunate that the patient was completely inebriated. If he had been sober, perhaps he would have heeded Dylan's instructions to stay still, and perhaps he wouldn't have lashed out on having his shoulder reset, throwing Lily backwards practically into the next cubicle. Everything moved very quickly after that. The patient, becoming rowdier by the second, was restrained by security. Slightly dazed by the turn of events, Lily allowed Dylan to help her to her feet, but not before she had adjusted the fit of her prosthetic: the way she had been standing meant that she had pulled it slightly loose on falling to the ground.

"Haha," the patient jeered, looking down at her. "Peg leg."

"It's your choice how you continue with your treatment," Dylan said sharply, turning around at once. "You can shut your mouth, and allow me to reset your shoulder so you can go home, or you can carry in this ridiculous manner and find yourself handcuffed to this bed and facing arrest for abuse of NHS staff." He stood directly in front of Lily, blocking her from the patient's view, before turning around to face her, still ensuring that the position of his body meant she was out of sight. "Are you all right?"

Lily ran both hands down her mid-section, just checking. "Yes, I'm just fine."

"Sure?"

"If I wasn't, I'd tell you." Lily wanted to return the question, because Dylan's face had gone pale. She didn't have to ask the question though, because she knew the answer he would give, and the truth. They were not the same. She excused herself from the cubicle and had just picked up another patient file when Elle stopped her.

"What happened to you?" Elle said, smiling at Lily.

Lily didn't quite catch her drift. "Drunk patient threw me across a cubicle and thought it was entertaining to make comment about my prosthetic, as if I haven't heard it a million times before." She rolled her eyes.

"Everyone wants to be a comedian," Elle remarked, looking in the direction of the cubicle Lily had just come from. "I meant, what happened to the quiet registrar I thought I knew, suddenly letting loose on Sam like that?"

Lily looked immediately down to the floor, feeling her cheeks grow warm.

"No, no," the consultant corrected. "I don't mean to sound like I'm telling you off! Goodness, it would have been more than my job's worth, especially now, to cheer you on. But I'm so pleased that you shut him down so spectacularly!"

"Oh… well – I –" Lily didn't know what to say. "I suppose… I suppose that someone had to remind him that he can't just wade in here and upset the way things work. It wasn't fair, I couldn't say nothing."

"I think I read you wrong, you know? The world needs more people like you, who'll stick up for what's right, and what's fair."

Lily pressed her lips together, embarrassed. "Thank you," she replied. She didn't feel like she'd done anything out of the ordinary.

* * *

Lily knew that Dylan was sinking. He was making a valiant effort to keep his head above the water and ignore the fact that his anxiety was making a reappearance, but it was precisely this effort which made it so obvious to Lily that he was struggling. He was taking too much care over the little things – and this was just one of the reasons that she could not tell anyone what was happening. She'd be laughed out of town: __you want us to do something about Dylan, because he's being too careful?__

She knew that Zoe would listen, but what good could she do, three and half thousand miles away?

Lily may have been commended for her moment of confidence, but this did not mean that Lily wanted to repeat her time in the spotlight. Which is why she went home at the end of her shift, completely bypassing Connie's office.

* * *

It was stupid of her, to mention it casually to Ethan, that evening.

"I know that you don't want to hear it, but Dylan is struggling and I don't know what to do," she said, standing with Lizzie balanced on her hip. She was about to take her daughter up to bed, so at least she had a quick get-out clause if this conversation turned nasty.

"They're only giving him what he deserves," Ethan replied off-handedly.

Lily sighed. He was only concentrating on the constant frostiness (although it was now going so much further than frosty, it was practically Antarctic) and not the impact this was having on her friend's mental wellbeing. "He doesn't deserve to spend every waking moment punishing himself and getting unduly anxious for something that could have happened to anyone."

Ethan shrugged as if Lily's words meant nothing to him.

His response meant even less to his wife. She seethed silently for a moment, struggling to process. She knew she couldn't get as angry as she would like to, because she was holding her daughter in her arms and her son was only in the hallway, playing with his train set, the tracks of which stretched from the middle of the living room and halfway on the kitchen floor. "Ethan Hardy," she said, finding it hard to form words around the feelings tangling up her vocal cords. "I am ashamed of you tonight." It was short, simple, and it would hopefully hit him where it hurt and remind him that he couldn't treat anyone like that. Lily walked over to him and put Lizzie on his lap, before escaping upstairs.

She curled up on top of the bed, deeply hurt and upset on top of confused about how she should be feeling at all.


	16. Chapter 16

"You might be the most accident-prone doctor I've ever worked with," Dylan remarked to Lily as they prepared resus bay 4 for an incoming paediatric trauma case. "You're okay, aren't you?"

The registrar had let out a quietly pained sound on leaning across the bed, but she was quick to set her friend straight. "Whatever," she replied softly. "I'm just slightly worn-out from physio yesterday."

"How many sessions is that now?"

"Um, yesterday was my… second, maybe third. We've only got another two minutes, check the ECG machine for me please?" Lily was taking charge of their turn in resus, and avoiding further questions about her physio appointments on purpose. Unfortunately, Dylan did not take the hint. Later, Lily would wonder why she had expected him to, when his mind was so clearly elsewhere. She found herself unintentionally snapping at him. "And if I wasn't here, who would cover for the fact you and Ethan are incapable of working in the same room?" Clapping a hand over her mouth, she instantly regretted her words. _What have I done?_ she thought, _what has it come to when I'm speaking like that to Dylan too?_ But she didn't have time to apologise before their patient was pushed through the doors and towards bay 4. Lily realised too late where they were working, and the impact this could have on an already-anxious Dylan.

"This is Felicity Heathfield, eight years old," Jez began. "She was thrown from her horse approximately ninety minutes ago, landing in a ditch. She wasn't wearing body armour; we've been unable to clear neck or spine, but she was wearing a helmet."

At these words, Iain pushed the helmet into Dylan's hands. The consultant began to inspect it closely. It was battered, and the usually smooth fabric covering was ruched and torn in various places, but hopefully it would have protected their petite patient from a serious head injury.

"Crush injury to left arm, acute pain in local and surrounding tissue. Importantly, she is suffering numbness and tingling in her legs." Jez reeled off all their patient's statistics, and was ready to leave resus when he looked at Dylan anew. "Dr Keogh, are you all right?"

Iain pressed a hand onto Jez's shoulder while answering a call-out on his radio. "3006 to control, received, leaving Holby ED now, over." Then he spoke to Jez. "Time to go, buddy."

"I am perfectly adequate, thank you," Dylan replied curtly. "You've got places to be."

The two paramedics were gone in a matter of seconds. "He was just trying to help," Lily said quietly to Dylan, while looking down firmly at her patient. "Felicity, sweetheart, can you hear me?"

Felicity tried to nod, without success due to the blocks holding her head still. She let out a cry of distress.

"Ah-ah-ah," Lily said, realising suddenly that she was fussing over her patient like she would have done her own daughter. "Keep your head still for me. My name is Lily, can you tell me what happened to you?" She listened carefully to the accurate description she was offered. Shining a light into the little girl's eyes, Lily remarked to Dylan: "Pupils are equal and responsive, no confusion or amnesia. Head injury is looking unlikely."

Dylan was still inspecting the helmet up until the moment Lily had called her patient 'sweetheart.' She never did that – in fact, the only person he knew who _did_ do that, was Zoe. He felt slightly sick at the thought of them being in close communication, and they must have been, for Lily to start picking up the particulars of Zoe's speech.

Lily continued. "Dylan, I'm going to get an MRI sorted, I need you to assess that crush injury. Left arm," she reminded him gently.

She would have been gone for less than five minutes, but she was stopped by Felicity's understandably concerned mother.

"Dr Hardy, will she – will she be alright?" the woman asked. "I shouldn't have let her out without her usual protection – she didn't want to wear it because of the warm weather!"

"Mrs Heathfield," Lily said firmly, taking her to one side. "Felicity is awake and talking. I'm a little worried about her spine but she'll be having scans and further investigations, and she'll be under obs for at least the next twenty-four hours. I understand that this must be really difficult for you, but trust me, please. She's in the best place, and she needs you to remain calm so that you can look after her."

"Do you have children?"

"Two." Lily replied straight away. "My son is starting primary school in September, and my daughter just turned one." Lily was taken aback when Felicity's mother took her hands for a second.

"Please, just look after her." Her desperate tone brought a lump to Lily's throat that she had to fight very hard to swallow away.

"I will," she promised sincerely.

* * *

Back inside resus, Lily's heart rose into her mouth. "What happened?" she asked Dylan urgently, motioning to the now unconscious girl in bay 4.

"Compartment syndrome," he replied simply, before elaborating. "I had to sedate her to treat it, but she will be fine."

Lily was relieved: although a medical emergency, a diagnosis of compartment syndrome in the presence of a highly skilled consultant wasn't too serious. "Upstairs are ready for her now, so she can go straight from her scans up to paeds."

Dylan nodded, and stepped back from the bed, examining his hands. "They were perfectly steady when I did the procedure, I promise."

He sounded so lost and innocent as he showed her the way his hands were shaking, as violently as if they were freezing cold. "I don't doubt it," she reassured him. "Everything okay?" She almost knew the answer, but needed to be sure.

"Um," he faltered.

Lily watched him closely for a few seconds. His breath was catching in his throat every third or fourth breath. He was trying to disguise his panic but he couldn't hide it from her. She raised her eyebrows.

"I can't go anywhere," he said stiffly. "I'm needed here and if I beat a track of retreat then I'll be ripped to shreds, you know it'll happen."

"You certainly are not needed here, if you'd be better off taking five minutes," Lily said calmly. "Leave it to me."

* * *

Lily knocked confidently on Connie's office door, the needs of her friend far outweighing the fear behind this action. This confidence wavered somewhat once she had been welcomed inside.

"Lily, what can I do for you?" Connie asked, pushing her computer keyboard away from herself so she could rest her arms delicately on her desk.

"Um, the new protocol, about telling someone where you're going if you need to go outside the department – I – that's why I'm here. Dylan is really not very good, we've just come out of resus and I'm going to take him somewhere quiet. The Peace Garden, I think. Just for a few minutes." Lily looked away for a moment, biting her lip and wishing she couldn't feel her cheeks turning pink. "I couldn't say it to any of the others."

"I see," Connie said. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

"I don't think so, sorry," Lily replied. "Just – just page me first, not him, if you need another doctor back here before we come back." She wanted to tell Connie everything about how Dylan was being bullied to hell and back by her staff, but that would be such a violation of privacy that Lily would probably find herself in less favour than those giving Dylan hell. "And if anyone asks, don't tell them the truth, please. I know that lying doesn't fix the problem and _I know_ to the nth degree that it only makes things worse, but –"

"Lily, stop. Consider it done." Connie paused. "You know that you don't have to deal with this all by yourself, don't you?"

"He doesn't trust anyone else with this," Lily said, fiddling with the chain of her necklace.

"I know. I didn't mean just that."

* * *

It took a long time for Dylan to ride out the panic this time.

Finally, Lily plucked up the courage to be more than a silent supporter. "I'm really sorry for the way that I spoke to you in there. I shouldn't have done it and it wasn't fair. Be honest with me, did I cause this?"

Dylan shook his head furiously. Sitting beside her on the bench, he had his elbows rested on his knees and the heels of his hands pressed into his eyes.

"Please stop punishing yourself," Lily appealed. Carefully, she eased his hands from their tight fists on his eyes, slipping her hands into his. "Concentrate on something else. I'm not much to concentrate on, I grant you, but I've got to be better than whatever's going on in your head right now. Stop doing this to yourself."

"I can't."

"Dylan –"

"I can't, I just can't, I'm sorry!" He pulled his hands away and put them both at the back of his neck. Lily could see his fingernails digging into his skin.

"You don't need to apologise to me, you know that."

"But there's bugger all else I can do to try and fix this!" He stood up forcefully, before realising this wasn't helping. He sat back down, and his voice was the same lost tone that he'd used in resus. "I'm losing control, again, and I hate it. It's dragging me under and I don't know what to do anymore!"

"You could have said something at any point, and I would have listened." Lily bit her lip. "I will still listen now, and I promise that nothing will change that." She shook her right hand out to the side: for some reason, it was tingling like mad. "At risk of sounding like a fortune cookie, there was a quote I used to rely on when I was recovering from my amputation, and I think you could draw some power from it too." She omitted the fact that Ethan was the one who had shared it with her, because even she didn't want to feel supported by him right now. " _At any given moment, you have the power to say that this not how my story is going to end._ I know that you're having a truly awful time at the moment, but that doesn't have to be the end of your story. There are things you can do to change it. I know it must be really hard for you to accept, but what happened to Cal was emphatically not your fault. Any of us could have found him out there, and anyone would have found him at the same time you did. The only reason you were leaving the hospital so late was that I was admitted. Does that make it my fault?"

"No, of course it doesn't! Yes… No… I don't know, Lily, I don't know anymore!" Dylan took a shuddering deep breath, tapping his fingertips together so quickly they barely parted.

"There are people, better qualified than I am, to help people in situations like yours," Lily said slowly. She hated that she was saying these words. "I'm not saying that I don't want to help you, please, please don't think that I am. But I'm saying that I think you need more help than I can give you. At least think about it, because I don't want to think about how far this could go if you don't get better help than me."

Dylan added nothing to this, too afraid to put into words the growing, tangled web that threatened to take him over completely. An even bigger problem was crawling out of the woodwork to taunt him: the interview was two days away. How could he possibly convince someone else that he deserved to keep his job, when that 'someone' was as calculating as Sam Strachan, and Dylan himself didn't believe he was worth keeping in the department?


	17. Chapter 17

**Hi, sorry for the little gap in uploads - the angst is finally grating on me and is getting hard to write! Plus real life is happening (a bit) around the edges of all this writing :) Hope you enjoy this chapter x**

* * *

When Lily got home that evening, Ethan asked the same question that he always used to.

"How was your day?"

But it felt different somehow. Lily couldn't feel the warmth which used to permeate every note of his voice. She didn't feel as though she was being asked by someone who loved her the way she knew Ethan used to. It was like being asked the question by a stranger on the street.

"Oh – um –" She stumbled over the words. "There were some difficult paeds cases," she lied. "It's just good to be home and know everyone is all right." She sounded so detached. Why couldn't she summon the closeness, the care and the attention that she and her husband never needed to _try_ to use? She didn't just sound detached, she felt it too. It used to be the way that any room with Ethan in it felt like home; today, the kitchen felt like home only because Will was sitting up at the table, colouring a picture of Fireman Sam with the crayons he'd been bought the week before her accident, and because Lizzie was sitting in her high-chair, trying to pick up and eat a few slippery, juicy slices of peach. Lily's throat ached with holding in her emotions. "Just one of those days, you know?" she said.

* * *

Sitting on the bed in her pyjamas (pale blue cotton, patterned with white clouds which were outlined in silver) she wanted to concentrate on the book she was reading, but this was an impossible task. Pride and Prejudice. She couldn't think of two better words to summarise the present-day E.D.

There was one thought in her mind which was louder than the others, which commanded her attention and wouldn't let her ignore it. At last, Lily gave in. She undid the fastening of her prosthetic and put it in its place under the bed, because she didn't want to get up again. She swapped the prosthetic for her laptop, which she opened carefully. Opening a word document (because she didn't trust herself to compose the message on skype without accidentally sending it too soon) she started typing a plea for help which sat as a deadweight on her shoulders and raised tears into her eyes. With all the tension lately, Lily didn't know how she still had tears left to cry over this.

When she was finished, it was very late, and staring at her bright laptop screen had given her a headache. But she carried on, and finally pressed 'send' before sliding under the duvet and waiting for sleep's sweet relief from the day.

* * *

In the morning, Ethan's side of the bed was cold and untouched. Despite everything, Lily felt cold terror sweeping through her at the thought he might have just left without saying a word. She knew that they weren't behaving like a couple, but that didn't mean that she wanted him gone. Tentatively, she checked to see if his clothes were still where they were meant to be, in their places in the wardrobe, although she was certain that she would have heard her husband packing a bag in the room where she was sleeping. A bubble of fear dissipated when she saw that everything was still how it should have been.

At lunchtime, Lily obsessed over her phone. Will was at pre-school, and Ethan was at work – that much had been made clear by the copy of the rota, attached to the fridge with an eye-wateringly acid green magnet. She had never thought of herself as indecisive; she'd never had reason to, but now, toying with a message so simple she'd sent it a thousand times before, she just couldn't tell what was the right thing to do. She knew Ethan's question of how her day had been, yesterday evening, had been insincere: it had been crushingly obvious from his tone, or lack thereof. But would a text message to the same tune be received as poorly, or might he see it for what it was, half an olive-branch?

On top of it all, her period was due and her stomach was cramping. Irritatingly raging hormones convinced her that she was over-reacting to everything and made her question herself at every opportunity.

Lizzie fell asleep after lunch, and Lily carried her upstairs to her room easily. She would never again take for granted the small things like this.

But once Lizzie was settled, Lily found herself unwilling to go back downstairs and be alone. She ended up sitting beside the cot, one hand balancing a book in her lap and the other gently skimming the poppers on Lizzie's onesie. To her relief, this action appeared to settle her daughter further, rather than disturb her. She wished that the relaxation could flow back through her fingertips. Her heart was beating so hard in her chest that she could feel every single pulse.

Lily found her mind being invaded by thoughts she did not wish to entertain. She wondered how her life might change if her marriage came to an end. Should she have acted differently? Was there something different she could have done, in order to stop this downward spiral of events? She wanted to tell Ethan that things would get better, that they wouldn't always exist in this cycle of non-communication and putting on brave faces, but in honesty she didn't know if that was even the case. Would the E.D. in its present state squeeze out not just an apparently 'superfluous' consultant, but also herself? She hated the way things were in that place, and it wasn't healthy or fair to put herself under so much pressure to perform in a toxic environment.

Involuntarily, she let out a sob. At once, she covered her mouth, eager not to wake Lizzie, and fled the room. She rushed downstairs, and into the living room, where she closed the door and sat against it, her knees drawn up. Hopeful that the sound would not travel through the house, she released her held-in cries. They tumbled from her lips, not in an orderly fashion but each one on top of the last. She struggled to draw breath, her thoughts still circling in threatening storm clouds.

Working in Holby E.D. had, at one stage, filled her with pride. It had been a place she liked to spend time, challenging, yes, but punishing in a personal way, never. But now it was as though the place had been turned upside down. The team, as it once stood, didn't exist anymore. Would they even miss her if she was gone? Did they care that things seemed to have changed irreparably?

Lily wondered if this was what it was like in Dylan's head all the time: being completely at the mercy of one's thoughts and unable to banish them when worrying had stopped being convenient. This only served to make her feel worse for not trying harder to get him some help. She wished Zoe was here, not because the older woman might do a better job but because she might know how to salvage this whole sorry mess.

* * *

Dylan was also having a bad day. A shift sent straight from the devil himself was crushing the last shreds of confidence he had been trying to hold onto for tomorrow's interview.

If he hadn't been so afraid to do so, he might have remarked that Ethan's sharper-than-usual manner seemed to be a result of tiredness. The registrar seemed intent on knocking him down at every single opportunity.

It felt uncomfortably as though Dylan was being micromanaged through the shift. Everything he did, Ethan was there. The paranoia was destroying him from the inside out – by early afternoon he was actually looking over his shoulder to see whether his cruel shadow had followed him again.

He paused in the staff room for a few minutes' respite. A pile of files in front of him, he was trying to decide when he was going to get it all signed off so it could be finished and forgotten. He rested one hand on the top of the pile, and used the other hand to cover his eyes for a moment. His head felt like it might explode. He was being attacked on all sides: by Ethan and anyone else who fancied a shot, and by his own brain, which had slipped out of his control and was now firmly against him.

"Do you want a hand with that paperwork?"

Dylan turned around in surprise: it was Ethan who had offered his assistance. He blinked, unsure how to react. "Um – uh – I…" He swayed on his feet for a moment. "No, I think… I'll be fine." He couldn't bring himself to say, 'thank you' to Ethan, like he would have tried to for anyone else.

"Are you sure?" Ethan's tone had changed from sweet to sour in half a breath. "Because if you're struggling that much out there, I hate to think how much you'll be snowed under with trying to keep your papers in some kind of order."

* * *

When Dylan walked back into the staff room later, to collect his things from his locker at the end of the shift, it was clear that his arrival had interrupted a loud conversation about that evening's planned trip to the Hope and Anchor. He fumbled with his locker key while eyes burned laser trials into his back and silence threatened to swallow him up. He pulled his jacket, wallet and keys from his locker quickly, then slammed the door shut unintentionally. This innocent accident was greeted by a wave of sound mocking him for his apparent show of temper.

The staff room door opened again, and Dylan hoped that the freeze-out wouldn't be continued. But when Iain walked into the still silent room, he looked around as if he'd interrupted something important.

"What's going on in here, then?" he asked of no-one in particular.

While attention was on Iain rather than himself, Dylan took the chance to escape. He realised he'd been holding his breath when the door swung shut behind him and he let out a sigh, his head pounding.

Soon after, there were footfalls behind him, and Dylan started walking more quickly.

"Hey, wait!" It was Iain's voice. Iain wasn't part of the lynch mob, was he?

Dylan stopped, and turned around, but he didn't know what to say. Equally, the tight web of anxiety was closing around the part of his brain which controlled speech.

"Dylan, don't let that lot wind you up," Iain said, putting his hands in his pockets and looking Dylan up and down as if inspecting him for signs of damage.

"They aren't," Dylan replied stiffly. It wasn't a lie. They weren't 'winding him up.' They were making every working moment a living hell. Those two were not the same thing.

"Right, well… It'll blow over soon enough. The next bit of drama will come through this place and they'll latch onto that instead. It's just how this place works, innit?"

Dylan hummed in agreement. This wasn't just a bit of drama. This was a life he'd caused to end, this was a group of people holding way too much power, this was his mental health dragging him ever closer to a terrifying abyss. He highly doubted that it would all just blow over.

He was almost out of the department when he was called back again. "Look, I'm fine, just leave me alone!" he half-shouted, turning around impatiently.

But it was Sam who had spoken, not Iain or one of the others.

Dylan's heart sank. That was another black mark against his name before the interview then, he supposed. "Sorry, I… I thought you were someone else." _How does that help?_ he thought. _You may as well have just written next to your name 'can't work with colleagues.' Say goodbye to this place, your days here are numbered._ The intimidating thoughts were getting louder and louder, harder and harder to ignore.

"Oh it's no problem, it's just the tension of this place, I'm sure. Listen, I'm not singling you out or anything, don't worry. I've had a word with all the consultants this afternoon, I want to wish you luck for tomorrow morning, that's all."

The voice of criticism in Dylan's head went wild. _He's just lying to you, the way you spoke to him, you might as well not turn up for your interview. You'll never keep your job. The rest of them are so much better at it than you anyway, you'd be doing them a disservice to try and compete for their jobs. It's not your job anymore, admit it. He's singling you out because he feels sorry for you, is that what you want? Do you want to go for a pity-interview?_

Out loud, Dylan manageda feeble thanks, before he managed to finally get out of the department.

* * *

Three thousand, six hundred and forty two miles away, Zoe received a message which broke her heart.


	18. Chapter 18

On the morning of the interviews, Dylan, having barely slept, felt far more anxious than he would have liked. Every part of his morning was tainted by a remorseless nausea which not only made his stomach roll but was also all in his head too. It felt a little like a dehydration headache, but a glass of water had no effect. It was that unfair dizziness that anxiety threw at him at the worst possible moments. It made him feel like it would be far easier to crawl back into bed and wait for it to pass, but that wasn't an option.

Standing in front of his bedroom mirror, he stared at his reflection. He scrutinised the knot of his tie carefully. He hated wearing a tie, but an interview demanded it, especially one this important. But it wasn't right. It was slightly too loose. When he adjusted it, he tightened it too far. _Stop it, you're getting worked up over a tie,_ he thought. But he couldn't stop. He undid the tie and redid it. Twice, then a third time. Dylan checked his watch, tapping the glass face as he did so.

* * *

"You're looking smart today, I don't think I've seen you wear a tie before."

Dylan saw straight through Elle's light tone as she fell into step beside him, walking towards the E.D. She might have followed her comment with a laugh, but it was nervous laughter. No-one would suspect a thing – why could some people cover their nerves so efficiently, while others had such visible tics at the first sign of stress? She was usually completely unflappable, so it was odd to notice that she was ill-at-ease with her impending interview. Perhaps her lie about him looking smart was a nervous tic too. Dylan's sleeves were rolled up as they would have been on any other day: if anyone asked, this was because he still had to be prepared to work despite the interview, not because he had been unable to put in the cufflinks he had laid out. He would have worn a suit jacket this morning, a sure-fire way to look like you meant business, but anxiety had rumbled that plan too. Nervous energy meant he felt like his body was running at a constant temperature far higher than anyone else's.

"Are you nervous about today then?" she asked, not put off by his previous lack of response.

Dylan didn't know what to say to her. "Um… not as such." That wasn't a lie. He wasn't 'nervous.' And it wasn't all down to today. It was, however, something of a comfort that rumours of his anxiety and general ineptitude hadn't spread throughout the whole department. Unless Elle had heard it all and was choosing to ignore, or to not believe what she had been told. But that couldn't be the case. He found himself falling back on an old tactic, sharp and brisk, to try and convince her that he wasn't two steps away from falling apart. "It's just a pointless exercise to demonstrate Sam's power, you've got nothing to worry about."

Because in all realities, Elle would not have anything to worry about. But what did Dylan have left to offer the Trust?

* * *

Lily and Ethan were due in work at 11.30am. Ethan took Will and Lizzie to pre-school and the childminder, respectively, at about ten o'clock.

"Do you mind if I borrow your laptop while you're out?" Lily asked, from her seat at the kitchen table, as Ethan came back into the room to get his jacket from the back of one of the chairs. "I'm – I'm not feeling too good, and I'd rather not go back upstairs if I don't have to."

Once upon a time, Ethan's response might have been more than a terse nod. A part of Lily still wanted him to fuss and be unnecessarily concerned. But with his nod of consent, he was gone, and she was alone in the house.

* * *

When Lily had said that she wasn't feeling well, Ethan had worried at once. He knew she was doing much better now – in any case, she had attended a number of physio sessions and she was now off the medication that had kept her pain free. If there had been a problem, he hoped that she might still come to him first. But it had been so long since they had been that close, he almost didn't know how to look after her anymore. She probably didn't want him anywhere near her.

* * *

Lily opened Ethan's laptop. When it had started up, she clicked on the google chrome icon and waited for the page to load. As usual, it loaded the last-visited page.

She was presented with a list of locally available registrar positions.

She snapped the laptop shut, feeling sick. How was she supposed to feel about this? Ethan hadn't said a word to her about wanting to leave the E.D. Of course, it wasn't her decision, but she would have liked to find out about it a little more gently than this. She didn't know how she was allowed to feel, but Lily knew that she definitely was angry, upset and hurt. How could Ethan even be considering walking away from Holby City Hospital, after every good thing that had happened there? There were dreadful memories held there too, and sometimes she also wished she could escape from those, but the good always outweighed the bad.

When Ethan came back after dropping off the children, Lily's headache was back. She hadn't the first idea what she was going to say to him, but she couldn't stop herself bringing it up.

"When were you going to tell me that you wanted to find another job?" She didn't even care that she was fulfilling every trope around nagging wives. This was serious.

Ethan stopped in his tracks, dumbfounded. "I – how do you know about that?"

Lily rolled her eyes. Avoiding the question wasn't going to be a wise decision. "Next time, don't leave a page open that you don't want me to see." She watched him squirm slightly, then went in for an attack. "How can you turn your back on that place, after everything you've achieved there, and everything it's done for you?"

Without thinking, Ethan snapped. "Because, in case it's escaped your notice, all of that has been largely overshadowed by the fact that my brother was MURDERED THERE! _None_ of that 'good' stuff matters anymore."

"None of it matters? Are you kidding?" Lily stood up, furious now. "You seem to have a very selective memory, Ethan Hardy. In case it's escaped _your_ notice, if you'd worked elsewhere, we wouldn't be married, and you wouldn't have your two beautiful children. If it wasn't for the people in there, we might well have been married but you could easily have been widowed by now. I owe my life to our friends there. You owe your career progression to that place. But if none of that matters, then fine. I suppose that tells me where I stand."

There was silence. Lily and Ethan stared at each other.

Lily was embarrassed to back down first, but she had to. Time was marching on and she had to be in work before Dylan's interview.

"Where are you going?" Ethan blurted out as she made a move towards leaving the room.

"To work," she replied coldly. "Because the friends to whom I owe my life are deserving of my support on a day on which one of them will probably lose their job. This isn't a game anymore. It's not the time to try and sabotage anyone, to throw a strop and make rash decisions. This is real, it matters. And it's people's lives, their careers that they've worked hard to build." She wrung her hands in front of her.

In a last-ditch attempt to save something, anything, here, Ethan reached out and put his hands around Lily's. She looked up at him with a face like a startled rabbit.

"Where do we go from here?" he said, sounding broken. "What's left of us?" This was more cutting than anything that had been said before.

Lily couldn't stop her voice breaking as she replied. "I don't know," she admitted. "I have no idea." She moved her hands so she was almost holding her husband's. She touched the wedding band on his left hand's ring finger. She met his eyes. "I still love you Ethan, more than I know how to say. But right now, I don't know that I like you very much." Ethan held her shoulders for a moment, and she felt herself crumbling. This wasn't how things were supposed to be, and yet he still had the power to give her butterflies and make her feel like the most important person in his life. How was this even possible? "I really have to go."

"I know." He rolled his lips between his teeth, a deep groove between his eyebrows. "I'm sorry." He kissed her forehead, hoping that she understood. He hugged her tightly, and apologised again, his voice no more than a whisper in her ear. She hugged him back.

For a moment, it looked as though she would stay, that they'd be able to work this out here and now.

But she still walked out of the house. She still left him standing in the kitchen, because she was too confused and too afraid to confront what little was left of her marriage.

* * *

Lily walked into the E.D. to find it in a state of disarray. It was usually a fairly chaotic environment, but there was always an element of clockwork about it. But this morning, it was all the chaos without the clockwork. Something was very wrong.

She walked past Louise and Robyn, and overheard a snatch of conversation that worried her greatly.

"Well if anyone gets cut, I hope it's him."

"Louise! You can't say that!"

"Why not? If he can't even be bothered to turn up, then why should they keep him?"

Lily pressed her lips together, folding her arms across her chest. This couldn't be happening. She stopped, not sure where she needed to be. Sam nearly crashed into her as he strode across the department. He looked agitated, like someone had thrown a spanner into the works of his neat little plan to up-end the department.

"Dr Gardner?" Lily said urgently, catching the consultant's arm. "What's going on?"

The older woman looked concerned. "Um, Dr Keogh didn't turn up to his interview," she replied.

Lily looked at her watch. She sighed: she should have been here earlier, she should have been able to do something to stop this happening. "Is there anything I can do?"

"If you can find him, Dylan, I mean, you'll probably be in Mr Strachan's good books forever. He's fuming."

At that moment, Lily knew that if she could find Dylan, the last thing she'd do would be to return him to Sam. "Has anyone seen him today, at all?" She knew she had to start narrowing down places that Dylan could be.

Elle looked uneasy. "Yes. I saw him this morning, spoke to him, actually. About two hours ago, maybe. Then… I don't know, I didn't see him again after that." She paused. "Lily, don't take this the wrong way, but why do you care? It's down to Dylan whether he decides to take this seriously or not."

"Trust me," Lily said firmly, "the problem here is precisely that he's taking this _too_ seriously. I care because… It's a long story, okay? It started with me losing a foot and ended with him giving me away when I got married. But it didn't end, it's still happening. Just… I care."

* * *

When Elle was gone, Lily pulled out her phone and sent a text to Dylan, not expecting a reply in the least. _What happened? Where are you?_

That was when she saw Sam heading back to Connie's office. In a sudden moment of bravery, she stopped him before he had reached the relative safety and quiet of the Clinical Lead's office.

"Mr Strachan, about Dr Keogh –"

"Lily, it was admirable when you stuck up for the consultants the first time, but I fail to see why it's any of your business –"

Lily didn't know where her daring was coming from, but she ran with it. "With all due respect Mr Strachan, you're wrong. I won't explain to you the specifics, but this _is_ my business. I am not simply a meddling registrar, which is more than can be said for you at this present moment in time. Just let me try and fix this situation, please." She hated that she was pleading with him, but she didn't have any other choice.

Sam's arrogant tone didn't waver. "Why should I? If he can't be relied upon to keep an appointment, then the Trust can afford to lose him."

"No!" Lily said, aware she was drawing attention to herself. Why was it the case that Sam always brought out this side of her? "If you honestly believe that the Trust can afford to lose Dr Keogh then you need to reconsider what you know about this department. You should also know that if you decide to cut him, on the basis of non-attendance, then I _will_ lodge a formal complaint against you. Dr Keogh is an incredibly talented doctor, who happens to be suffering a relapse of an anxiety disorder. The pressure that you've put on him, intentionally or otherwise, is sending him over the edge."

Lily felt terrible. She'd gone too far this time. She shouldn't have said that out loud, in public. The fact that it was in defence didn't make it okay. She flinched violently when she felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned around and saw that Connie was there, standing firm.

"Go and find him," Connie said, her voice lowered.

Lily nodded. Paying attention to herself again, her hands were tingling like crazy from the adrenaline of getting cross with Sam for a third time. Out of sight of everyone, she checked her phone, and could have cried with the mixed emotions of the two messages she had received.

One, from Ethan: _I'll be in work soon, but we have to talk. I've really messed up and I've already said it twice but I'm still sorry x_

The second was from Dylan. _Roof, it's quiet._


	19. Chapter 19

**Two chapters in a day, how did this happen? Enjoy, and let me know what you think! x**

* * *

Lily made her way up to the hospital roof alone, intensely worried about the state she might find her friend in. She tried to tell herself that the very fact he'd answered her text was a good sign. But Lily knew that she was being naïve, to hope that Dylan wasn't too bad. He never asked for help, so he must be feeling truly awful to have finally accepted her offer.

Climbing all these stairs gave her time to think, but did nothing for the fact her little fingers had gone numb and her hands were still tingly. Something wasn't right, but she didn't have the time to worry about herself.

It was windy, up on the roof. Lily spotted Dylan at once, his crouched form leaning against a wall telling her most of what she needed to know. She'd seen him through panic before, but it didn't make it easier, seeing him like this. She made her way over to him.

He had removed his tie: it was part-folded, part-crammed into the pocket of his white shirt. It was strange seeing his sleeves pulled down, creased from the way they had been rolled up before. His hands were half-covered. Lily was reminded strongly of the way she used to pull cardigan sleeves over her hands. She had often wondered why Ethan had always reacted so strongly to this, by pulling her into a hug and working the cuffs free of her fists. But seeing someone else do it highlighted exactly how distressing an act it appeared to be.

Dylan still didn't look up when Lily sat beside him on the floor. This frightened Lily, the fact that he was so wrapped up in his own fear that he'd lost track of his surroundings. But wisely, she didn't show it. If her heart was beating hard enough that she could feel a rush of blood in her ears every few seconds, what must he be going through?

"Dylan?" she said softly. "I'm here."

"I know," he muttered in response, still not looking up. "I didn't know what to say, I couldn't think of anything, I just –" He knew he was babbling, spilling out words for no reason other than to fill the silence. "I've made a mess of everything, and I don't know how to fix it, Lily."

"You don't have to. You don't have to fix it by yourself," she reassured. "I will help you. And I think Mrs Beauchamp is already doing her level best to get Mr Strachan off your back, about the interview." Lily had thought that this reassurance would help, but Dylan seemed to be panicking anew.

"No! No, no, no, no, no, no!" Dylan clasped his hands tightly, his sleeves falling from his grasp.

Lily saw for the first time that his hands were red raw. "Dylan, stop, what happened to your hands?" She began to realise that it might have been a mistake to come up here alone. She should have brought Connie, or Charlie. Lily was out of her depth now.

Dylan wanted the ground to swallow him up. His thoughts were swimming wildly in his head, but they seemed to clear a little with Lily's direct question. "I… I was writing something, and it went wrong… my fountain pen… there was a lot of ink on my hands, I couldn't get it off."

"Let me look, please." Lily examined his hands carefully, glad of something practical she could do. It looked as though he'd scalded his hands in his frantic effort to get them clean. It was difficult to tell, because he'd scrubbed them so harshly that they probably would have been red anyway.

"Lily, I think I'm going mad," Dylan said anxiously.

Lily was pulled up short by this comment. She scooted around until she was kneeling in front of him, and looked into his fearful face. "You're not," she said firmly, although at this juncture she wasn't certain of anything anymore. "I won't let you go mad, not on my watch, okay?"

"I am!" Dylan insisted. His eyes had been red this whole time, but it was only now that Lily saw tears threatening to fall. "I cried over cufflinks this morning. I wanted to put up a front of knowing what I was doing, of being normal, and I tried so hard but none of it matters anymore because I'm going to lose my job anyway."

"Not if I can help it, you won't. _This_ doesn't stop you being good at what you do."

"Yes, it does, and I wish you'd stop trying to make me feel better by telling me things that blatantly aren't true. I know that I burned my hands, and I didn't do it on purpose but it happened, so there's no point in telling me that it'll all be fine in the end. I'm going to lose my job, and I deserve to. What kind of doctor can't fit in with a team, tells lies, doesn't turn up to important things and lets people die? You can't tell me I'm a good doctor, Lily, because it's not true!"

Lily looked up at the sky for a moment. It looked as though it might rain. She couldn't bear sitting here, listening to Dylan spill out everything he'd been keeping in his head for who knew how long. He had always insisted that he didn't want to take medication for his mental health. He'd always been vehement about the fact that he would deal with it without chemical intervention. But the more Lily heard of what he was telling himself, day in, day out, the more she thought that maybe he would have to give in, and let someone prescribe him something, just for a short while. She knew that she'd never be able to put her signature to that prescription though.

"We need to go downstairs," she said, unable to hide the shake in her voice any longer. "We're going downstairs, and you have to accept whatever help is deemed necessary."

Dylan looked desperate. "Lily, no, please. Not that. Please, I don't want to have my brain fried and have my thoughts vetoed before they've even come to fruition."

"I'm sorry, I can't sit by and watch you destroy yourself. If you don't accept help, it might be thrust upon you and you might not be given a choice to accept it. I know that's the absolute worst case scenario but you need to decide whether your pride or your health is going to come first." She covered her mouth, biting back tears.

"I just want to go home and feel normal again." Dylan hung his head.

"Then let's go and work towards that end," Lily replied decisively. She wiped under both of her eyes. It wasn't her place to get emotional. "I won't leave you, down there, okay?"

* * *

Zoe Hanna stamped out the end of her cigarette. God, how she missed smoking in the UK.

* * *

The E.D. went very quiet, when Lily and Dylan came back down the main stairs. Everyone was looking at Dylan as though he was a bomb that might go off at any moment.

Dylan _felt_ like a bomb that might go off at any moment. He was quite glad that Lily had a loose hold on his arm.

"I suppose you won't be leaving after all then," Louise remarked rudely.

Dylan, who wasn't completely concentrating, looked at her blankly. "What?"

"Well, since your Personal Assistant here saved your job for you, someone else will have to go, won't they?"

Lily's cheeks burned. This was not her preferred way of telling Dylan that she'd gone for Sam's throat again. "Louise, do you know what your problem is? You think friendship is built on common enemies. I'd rather pick my friends based on support, kindness, and their willingness to forgive."

Louise was clearly unimpressed. Like a stuck record, she returned her favourite point, that friendship was nothing if there were lies involved.

Lily was running out of ways to answer back to this point, so she was, in part, relieved, and then concerned, when Dylan started to argue.

"What would you have done?!" he shouted. "If you can tell me a better solution, then by all means take me back in time to fix what I did. Given the circumstances, how could I possibly have done better? I am not the first, and I will not be the last person in this room to tell a white lie to the family of a deceased patient. I regret what I said; every day it comes back to taunt me and eat me alive, reminding me that I'm no good at my job. I do not need your assistance in making me feel worse!"

Silence reigned for a few seconds, before a familiar Liverpool accent cut across everything.

"Show's over, don't you think?" said Zoe, calmly.

Lily couldn't believe her eyes. She stepped backward, completely aghast. "But – I – you – you're here," she breathed, relief flushing through her system.

Zoe nodded, smiling. "Yeah, and not a moment too soon, by the looks of things." Then, she reached out to Dylan, who hadn't yet spoken to her. She put her hand on his arm, looking into his eyes to take his mental temperature. "Let's get out of here, okay?" she said softly.

"No!" Dylan protested. "They all think I'm public enemy number one, I have to tell them the truth!"

From the corner of her eye, Zoe spied Sam pulling him phone from the inside pocket of his suit jacket. "If you're even thinking about calling psych, don't," she said dangerously. "This is not your concern."

"Dr Hanna, aren't you supposed to be in Michigan?" Sam countered.

"No, actually, I'm supposed to be here. Sixteen hours ago, I _was_ in Michigan, but the day before that, I received nothing less than a distress call. I am definitely meant to be here. I'm needed here, no thanks to you." She looked at him with disgust, not bothering to disguise her feelings toward him for putting Dylan in this state.

Dylan still wasn't able to find any solace in his wild mind. His thoughts were bouncing off each other as though they were being fired through a pinball machine, with all the colours and lights and sounds to boot.

Lily scanned the people who still hung around like vultures, dying to be in on the drama. It took a second for her to notice that she was looking for Ethan. She needed to touch base in the middle of this horrible situation. She had almost given up hope, before she saw his blonde head coming through everyone. He was pushing to get to her – why?

"Dylan," he said quietly, and Lily's heart almost stopped beating. But her husband's tone was gentle, so unlike theway he'd been speaking to everyone lately that she almost didn't recognise it as his voice. "Dylan, look at me, please." Lily felt a lump rising in her throat. "I want to listen to what you've got to say, but I can wait. Let Lily and Zoe look after you, just for a little while. I'm sorry if I sound like I'm patronising you, I don't mean it. I just want to help." Ethan then looked at Lily. He squeezed her hand, then turned around and started telling people off for watching. Lily let out a weak laugh. She was so relieved.

* * *

Zoe and Lily took Dylan to one of the E.D.'s small side rooms. Away from prying eyes, the crest of the panic wave suddenly broke. Dylan paced up and down the room, trying to get rid of the panicky energy which permeated every inch of his being.

"I've really messed it all up now, haven't I?" he said, to no-one in particular.

"Of course you haven't," Lily said. "Just sit down, for a minute."

"I can't. If I stay still then I'll lose all control of what's going on up here." He tapped his forehead lightly with one finger. "They all think I've gone mad. I _know_ I've gone mad. It's all so wrong. Sam wanted to call _psych_ on me. They only do that when it's really bad."

Zoe intercepted Dylan's path across the room. She stood directly in front of him, holding his arms so that he couldn't wring his hands. "Dylan, it might seem really bad, but nothing is unfixable. We can fix this, I promise. You're not going mad, and anyone who thinks that will have to go through me first, right?" She let out a long breath. "Take a deep breath, and hold it for a second."

But this didn't help. As Dylan took the deep breath, he shuddered, taking in much more air than he'd intended. If he'd been feeling normal, he might have managed to stop hyperventilation taking hold. But as it stood, he suddenly felt panic's light-headedness taking over. "I can't breathe," he said, struggling to form the words from empty lungs.

"You can. You've got through this before and we're going to get through it now. Sit down," Lily said, moving over to the wall and sliding down it to sit the way they had done so many times before.

Dylan followed Lily's example, and after sending a quick text, she sat on his other side. The three of them sat like this, waiting for the panic to subside, reminding Dylan that his brain was just so full of adrenaline and fear that it didn't know what to do with itself, but every problem that it was throwing up was completely solvable.

In the absence of any paper prescription bags, Lily made Dylan breathe into his cupped hands in an effort to rebalance his oxygen and carbon dioxide levels. Desperate times and desperate measures, and all that.

But as Dylan began to calm down, Lily began to feel sick. She knew her mind had been wandering, to all the what-ifs which had threatened her over the last few days. And she couldn't get the images of the last hour out of her head. She let out a moan as a sharp pain crossed her stomach, and her headache returned with such a force that she felt like her head was falling apart.

Dylan's head whipped around. "What's the matter?" he asked.

"Nothing," Lily replied. "Concentrate on you, you're doing brilliantly."

Zoe was not convinced. She turned to get a good look at the registrar. She'd turned very pale. Zoe moved so she was sitting in front of Lily. "Lily? Don't lie to me, what's wrong?"

"I'm not the one you need to worry about here," she protested.

"I would beg to differ, actually. What hurts?"

Lily knew she was cornered. "My head, and my stomach. I'll be fine – I can't feel my left hand."

Zoe had already taken Lily's hand and was feeling for the younger woman's pulse. As she expected, it was racing, far higher, she expected, than Dylan's had been at the height of his panic attack. "Lily, what day is it?"

Lily opened her mouth to argue that this was hardly relevant, but was terrified to realise that she couldn't find the answer. "I – I don't know!" Her breathing picked up, and she wondered if she was heading for a panic attack, the same as Dylan. "This – what –" But she couldn't piece together a sentence, or even a coherent thought.

"Okay, don't panic," Zoe began.

"Don't p-panic?!" Lily put her hands across her stomach as another sharp pain came out of nowhere and interrupted everything.

Zoe was exceptionally glad when Ethan came to the door of the side room. At least her text to Connie had got through – no doubt with ridiculous charges, now that her phone was running on an American contract, but that didn't matter right now. He was carrying a small box of pills, but on seeing Lily almost doubled up, he all but threw them at Zoe before dropping to his knees at Lily's side.

"Ethan, I will explain everything, just get her out of here. Believe me when I say it's not serious. Get her blood pressure checked out, but don't give her anything other than a glass of cold water." Zoe was spinning plates, and right now her highest priority had to be her best friend in mental health crisis.

Lily begged to differ with this course of treatment. Her immediate thought was that she was having astroke, or some kind of seizure. She couldn't deal with being deal another bad hand. Not again. Not when the last time had put such a distance between her and Ethan.

* * *

In the fifteen minutes it took for Zoe to come looking for Lily and Ethan, Lily was astounded to find that her symptoms disappeared as quickly as they had all developed.

"You're looking better," Zoe said, coming through the curtain of the cubicle Lily was in.

"I'm feeling better," Lily said honestly, wriggling the fingers on her previously-numb left hand for good measure. Ethan interlinked his fingers with hers when she did this. "Zoe, what just happened?"

"I've seen it a handful of times in the States," Zoe said nonchalantly. "It was an acute stress reaction."

Lily actually laughed in her face, covering her mouth immediately. "Sorry – just, isn't that exclusively seen in soldiers and survivors of terrorist attacks?"

"Not exclusively, no. It's not impossible in everyday life, and when you've been handed a few days like the ones you've just had, it's actually highly possible. It goes as quickly as it comes, are you feeling alright now then?"

Lily nodded.

"Her BP's still a little bit high," Ethan added. "But I guess it'll only come down now."

"Yeah, should do," Zoe replied. "Once you've been removed from the stressful stimulus, it tends to disappear."

Lily looked at Ethan. She squeezed his hand. "Can you please give me a minute with Zoe?" she asked.

"Of course, as long as I can have you back afterwards?"

Lily looked at him, seeing for the first time in so long, the man she had fallen in love with. "Obviously."

Ethan kissed Lily's cheek before leaving. The butterflies were definitely back, and Lily couldn't be happier.

* * *

"Thank you _so much_ for coming, Zoe. I didn't expect you to just get on a flight and turn up here, but I'm so glad that you did."

"Sometimes, you just have to go where you're needed most," Zoe said thoughtfully. She sat on the bed, facing Lily, before pulling the young woman into a tight hug. "You're looking different, to when I saw you last!"

Lily smiled. "I should hope so too!" It was so strange to have Zoe here, when the last time they'd hugged and talked in person, there had been a still-growing baby bump between them.

"So will I get to see your 'baby' then, while I'm here?"

"How did I know that would be your first question? And less of the baby, she's growing up so quickly!" Lily knew that they were avoiding talking about something very important. Her face turned serious, and from the way Zoe's followed suit, Lily knew the consultant knew what was coming. "How's Dylan doing?"

Zoe looked away for a second, before looking Lily in the eyes. "He's really not good, but I think you gathered that much already. I asked Connie to prescribe a short course of benzodiazepines, just to give him some temporary relief from it all, level things out so we can try and fix things."

"I should have noticed sooner that things were going wrong." Lily looked down to her lap, upset at how far things had gone.

"No," Zoe said, shaking her head. "You did notice, but everything else was going wrong too. But it's going to get better now. Everything is going to sort itself out. I've got a good feeling about this, especially since it looks like you're back on good terms with Ethan." She raised one eyebrow, and Lily blushed.

"I don't know how that happened. We had the worst row this morning, and yet somehow it's still all righted itself."

"If something is meant to be, it'll happen, no matter what. I think you've found yourself a keeper, in case that wasn't already blatantly obvious from the way he _still_ looks at you as though he's never seen another woman in his life!"


	20. Chapter 20

**Hi, hope you enjoy the chapter tonight :) It'll be a week or so before I upload again, but the story is almost done now, so I'm definitely not abandoning ship x**

* * *

"You understand why I'm reluctant to trust you, don't you, Lily?" Connie asked, standing in the cubicle Lily had been confined to since her scare with an acute stress incident, ninety minutes ago.

Lily was trying to convince the Clinical Lead to allow her back on shift. Embarrassed, she knew that Connie wasn't being deliberately difficult. She tried to mentally total up the number of times she'd bent the truth about her health in order to continue to work. Too many. She nodded meekly. "I know. I just want to help."

"Your commitment to this department is commendable."

"If it wasn't for this department, I probably wouldn't be alive. I think it owe it quite a lot."

"Yes, but you owe it your best self." Connie knew that Lily was trying to get back out there to try and partially fill the gap left by Dylan, who would be out of the picture for a few days at least. "I'll make you a deal, okay? You take one more hour, in the staff room so you don't feel guilty about taking up space, because I know that you would." She looked at Lily knowingly. "In that hour, you will make sure to drink plenty and have something to eat, and after that hour you can return to work, _if_ you stick with Ethan, so he can keep an eye on you. Does that sound like something you'd be amenable to?"

Lily nodded, smiling. "Yes, I think I'll manage that quite well. Thank you," she said gratefully, swinging her legs off the side of the bed and following Connie out of the cubicle.

* * *

This was not how Zoe had imagined her return to the UK. She'd imagined coming back to surprise everyone, maybe next February for Dylan's birthday, or at the end of this year, for Christmas and New Year's Eve. Maybe she would have brought Nick too, she would have liked to see him meet and possibly clash with Connie, over what constituted good running of Holby E.D. She had wanted to feel like coming home to Holby was a highlight of her year, re-opening a book that she loved to read and falling back into a team who felt like family.

She had not envisaged wading into a department in the throes of a civil war, to rescue Dylan, who still would not consent to taking his prescription of benzodiazepines. This despite still being high on adrenaline and anxiety, and freely admitting that he felt as though he was being screamed at by his brain. The box of pills sat in her handbag, because she knew that there would come a point in the evening where he would take the pill quietly, without fuss or attention. That was just how he worked, and she was glad of not being away long enough to forget that.

She drove him home, in his truck, once she was satisfied that there would not be anyone waiting for him to leave, ready to rip into him again.

"What made you come back?" Dylan asked, looking straight ahead. That was the beauty of conversations held during car journeys: eye-contact wasn't an unnegotiable necessity and, on the whole, people tended to be more honest as a result of that. It was a strange truth.

"Pass, next question please," Zoe said awkwardly.

But Dylan stayed quiet, empowered by the social rules of talking in the car. Even the most difficult questions were easier to answer when you weren't compelled to look at the person asking. This was a something he needed to know the answer to.

Zoe sighed, well-aware that she was being played like a violin, a slave to social conventions. It was the first time she'd really considered the question, since she had instinctively and impulsively booked a flight from Michigan to Heathrow, then navigated the joys of the British rail system until finally getting a cab and stepping out onto that oh-so-familiar car park outside the front of Holby City Hospital. A traffic light ahead of them turned red, and she smoothly stopped the truck. She ran a hand through her hair.

"Lily left me a message, two days ago," she said at last, still looking straight ahead. "It was pretty clear that she needed me here." Zoe paused. "And I was worried about you."

Dylan fidgeted uncomfortably. "I always thought talking in the car was so much easier. I didn't bank on it not being me, hearing things I didn't want to."

The light turned green, and Zoe pulled away from the crossing, but not before she'd looked across and noticed that Dylan was tapping each of his fingers in turn on the thumb of his right hand. He was looking out of the passenger-sidewindow, and was completely unaware.

* * *

Dylan let Zoe into the boat; he saw it through her eyes for the first time, and was appalled at the unintentional mess he had allowed himself to sink into. Dirty cups and plates balanced themselves precariously by the sink – this was almost the worst part, because when they had lived here together, he'd been the boring one who had always insisted on doing the washing up the second it materialised. A pile of post sat on the coffee table, undisturbed except for the obvious dark stain of a coffee cup ring on the top envelope. If Zoe investigated further, she would find similar marks at regular intervals down the pile: the heap had been growing for over a fortnight.

Even the air in here seemed neglected. Zoe didn't want to impose and yet she knew Dylan needed her to take charge. Tactfully, she opened the kitchen window before flicking the kettle on, grateful that there were two clean mugs left in the cupboard. She would tackle the washing up later.

"How are your hands?" she asked, turning around and leaning against the sink.

Dylan, sitting on the sofa, didn't answer. His hands stung, but he didn't deserve any help to fix them. It was his own stupidity which had led to him scrubbing them 'clean' and doing more harm than good. The satisfaction of getting rid of the last trace of black ink had been short-lived, replaced with embarrassment at the sight of his pink, raw skin. Fine cracks were visible on his knuckles, tiny beads of blood having escaped. He didn't want Zoe to look at what he'd done to himself.

Zoe wished it was easier to convince Dylan to swallow that pill. He was tearing himself up again. His elbows rested on his knees, and he looked down at the floor, his hands linked behind his neck. His legs were twitching, almost bouncing in their effort to release some of his mounting anxiety.

The kettle clicked off, and Zoe made two cups of coffee.

"What happened to Lily?" Dylan asked, still in his tense, hunched position. "Today, I mean. This afternoon."

Zoe sat down next to him, putting one of the two mugs on the table. "The pair of you never cease to amaze me. Doesn't matter what's going on, you always care about other people first." She took a sip of her drink.

"Because it's infinitely easier than caring about ourselves, probably."

Zoe's shoulders sagged. Dylan's habit of telling the truth was not always easy to take. "Lily's fine," she said eventually. "She had an acute stress reaction, but I promise you it was _way_ more to do with Sam bloody Strachan than it was to do with you. She is completely alright now," she reiterated, needing him to not feel bad about that, on top of everything else.

* * *

Zoe began to make right the situation inside the boat. It was early evening; while running the tap to fill the washing-up bowl, she searched the cupboards to find something to cook. She put spaghetti in a pan with boiling water, and set it on the hob. Checking the use-by date on a jar of pasta sauce, she decided it would definitely do just fine.

Dylan, watching her with mild fascination, wondered aloud why she wasn't tired, after travelling so far.

"The time difference isn't all that bad, really," Zoe replied calmly. "I slept on the flight anyway, and that makes the jet-lag easier, so I was told. I guess I have to believe now, too." She returned to the washing up.

"I find it hard to believe that you spent thirteen hours on a flight and a further three on unreliable British public transport, just to do my washing up."

She turned around and made sure she had her friend's full attention. "I know it's not much, but it needs doing, and –"

"–Yes, alright, tidy boat equates to tidy mind. Although whoever decided that the cleanliness of my kitchen would dictate my mental health was sadly mistaken. I can categorically say that the correlation goes the opposite way."

* * *

When Lily and Ethan finished their shifts, Ethan drove Lily home, picking up Will and Lizzie on their way. There was none of the difficult silence or tense atmosphere between them, that had been omnipresent of late.

Ethan stopped the car, and was about to get out to go and collect Will from pre-school, when Lily put out her hand, brushing against his shoulder to stop him.

"Just wait, just a minute longer," she said. "Please."

"Whatever for?" Ethan asked curiously.

"Because I've missed this. I've missed us. I've missed feeling the way I do right now, knowing that everything is okay between us, completely comfortable with the way things are."

"I've missed us too," he admitted.

Lily turned in her seat and leaned over to her husband. She kissed his cheek, then sat back in her seat, looking down at her lap. She linked her hands tightly. "In case I haven't made it abundantly clear, because I do mean to, I take back what I said about not liking you. I still like you very much, and I'm sorry for what I said. That was a really low blow."

"Don't feel bad about things that have already happened. The past is the past, okay? you have to live in the present. And that goes for me too, okay? I can't be stuck with what happened and forget to concentrate on what's still happening."

Not quite believing what she was hearing, Lily looked up and into Ethan's eyes. There was raw emotion clear on his face, he wasn't uttering meaningless platitudes. She turned back to him, put one finger under his chin, and kissed his lips. She really had missed this.

* * *

Later, at home, Lily felt herself truly appreciating what she had. Sitting on the back doorstep, cautiously sipping a cup of tea, she had half an eye on Lizzie and half an eye on Ethan and Will playing a heatedly competitive game of football. Ethan might insist he was nothing like his brother, but the gleam in his eyes, of pride and excitement, meant it felt as though Cal was playing football with them too. She gripped her cup of tea tighter, looking up to the sky.

Suddenly, Will was standing in front of her. "Will you join in, Mummy?"

She looked from his expectant face, to Lizzie, who was still avidly watching the lawn from her bouncy chair, in case all the excitement started again. Then she looked at Ethan, who was clearly trying to work out what she was going to do.

"I'm not a chess piece, Ethan, you don't have to look at me with such confusion," she said lucidly. Putting her cup of tea down on the floor beside the back door, she allowed Will to take her by the hand and drag her up to join the game.

Before she knew it, she had somehow kicked the ball through the flowerpot goalposts, and Will was running a victory lap around the garden in her honour. Slightly giddy, she was taken by surprise when Ethan caught her by the waist and lifted her into the air before spinning her around, almost making her fall in the grass. She squealed with laughter and she could hear both of her children giggling away too.

The kitchen timer rang from inside.

"Saved by the bell," she said breathlessly. "Dinner's ready."

Will went running into the house, and Lily made her way over to get Lizzie from her bouncy chair.

"Hold on," Ethan said. "One last thing."

She turned around to face him. He hugged her, lifting her up off the ground again and kissing her.

* * *

After Zoe and Dylan had eaten, Zoe did the final bit of washing up, then picked up Alice's lead.

"You don't have to do everything," Dylan said quickly. "I know you like taking up this role of mother hen, but –"

"But nothing. You were worried about me being tired, but what about you? Panicking expends way too much energy. Tomorrow, you can get back on the horse and do everything yourself, just the way you like it. But tonight, I'm going to take care of you, and you're going to let me. Because I will just continue to do it anyway, and you know that. Okay?"

"Okay."

* * *

Zoe had been back inside for less than thirty seconds when Dylan informed her matter-of-factly that he had, at long last, taken the dose of benzodiazepine. She couldn't disguise her relief.

"How are you feeling?" she asked gently. She took back her space on the sofa, and tried not to look like she was trying to give him a visual once-over.

Dylan looked at her as though he was still trying to decide how he felt, exactly. "Like my head has been packed out with cotton wool. I can't feel anything. Don't smile, I haven't decided whether I hate it or not, yet."

"You don't have to hate it. You could just accept that that's how it is."

"Ah, but that wouldn't be particularly in-keeping with my obstinate personality, now, would it?"

Dylan might not be able to feel anything in particular, but Zoe knew that the one thing she was feeling was a reprieve of all the worry she'd had about him over the last thirty-six hours. There was no longer an exclusion zone of nervous energy around him. He wasn't agitated or upset, and after the state he'd been in this afternoon, it was nice to see him somewhat closer to normal.

Now that he was calmer, and numbed to what had gone before, it was much easier to ask: "Dylan, is there anything I can do that will make all of your anxiety easier? I don't want to offer you a truckload of stereotypes and little things that might get you through the next five minutes, the next hour, but not make a real difference."

"At this point, Zoe, I think that I'm so grateful that you're here and so drugged to high heaven that I probably won't even notice you pumping me full of clichés."

"I've missed you, so much. There's no-one else on this earth like you, no-one comes close."

"I should hope not," Dylan replied, with all of his usual dry humour. "It's not easy to keep up this image while completely falling apart."

Zoe had to bite back her initial response to this deadpan self-deprecation. "Dylan –"

"The things that I want to say, to try and explain what's going on – I have this awful feeling that they'll sound like I don't want you to care. And I do, I think, even though my every instinct is telling me to just hush up and deal with this by myself."

"You don't have to do that, you know that you don't. Fight back, you don't have to listen to those thoughts."

Dylan sighed, his shoulders sagging visibly. "You try so hard to understand, but you still don't get it. I _can't_ admit that I am drowning in those thoughts that I know I'm not meant to listen to. I _can't_ say that I thought I was better, that I'd ended the chapter of my life that was dictated by all this fear, but then Lily was nearly killed and Cal was stabbed and I now I'm worse than I was before! I'm supposed to be able to deal with this sort of thing – for goodness' sake I'm a doctor, I'm meant to deal with death and near-death and then just carry on like nothing has happened."

"Right, Dylan, you need to listen to me." Zoe made sure she was looking exactly into his eyes, and that he was paying attention to her. She had been taken aback by his frank and unmoving delivery of such dark thoughts that she didn't know he was capable of. She wished he wasn't capable of all that. "You have had a horrible time, worse than most people ever have to deal with, even doctors who are 'supposed' to get on with things. It's okay to not be okay. You are allowed to admit that you might need help. And it's totally fine for that to be a frightening thing for you to say. I promise that you are going to be all right in the end. You are having a god-awful time of it at the moment, but you are not the first and you will not be the last. You're not alone in this." She hugged him tightly, and was unsurprised when he sat stiffly and didn't react. She wondered whether she was hugging him to hold him together or to keep herself in one piece.

But then she felt him lift his arms and hug her back. She relaxed, resting her head on his shoulder. Despite all the circumstances around it, she was back in Holby with her best friend. He might be having a dreadful time but he was still here, and she was here, and for tonight at least, it was the two of them against the world.

* * *

That night, bedtime stories happened all together, on Lily and Ethan's bed. Lily held the book, "Melrose and Croc Find a Smile" while Ethan sat on her right-hand side with a very sleepy Lizzie against his chest. Will sat cross-legged between them, thrilled with the way his family was all back to normal. Will excitedly pointed at words he thought he could recognise.

"That says Melrose!" he said eagerly. "It's got a 'm' at the start, hasn't it!"

Lily shushed him, keen that Lizzie should stay in her almost-asleep state. "Yes, it does, good boy, William."

"When I go to school, I'll be able to read books all by myself," he said proudly.

Lily felt Ethan's hand on her shoulder, and she knew his heart was also swelling with pride at their son's enthusiasm to start school in September.

* * *

William was still excited about going to school when Lily tucked him into bed. She supposed that she shouldn't quell his passion: it would be a whole lot harder to get him into his uniform on that first day if he didn't want to go. But she soothed him expertly, reminding him that that there was plenty of time to be excited tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.

She was almost ready to leave him and go downstairs, when he opened his arms for one last hug.

"I think you and Daddy found your smiles, like Melrose in the story. You're happy."

"You know what, William? I think we have found our smiles. Now, you go to sleep like a good boy, and I will see you in the morning."

She kissed his warm little forehead, brushing his curly hair back from his face.


	21. Chapter 21

Ethan stared at the tv, not really taking in the evening news at all.

Lily knew his mind was elsewhere. She put her hand on his knee, and wasn't surprised at all when he didn't slip his hand around hers, as he would have done ordinarily.

"Will you be alright?" she asked. "I know I'm only taking Will upstairs to bed, but if you don't want to be by yourself then I'll completely understand." Lily's other arm was wrapped around her son, who was sitting in her lap, only a few minutes away from sleep.

Ethan turned to look at her. "I'll be fine," he said quietly. "I think I've had worse days." His voice was low but telling nonetheless, of the day he'd had.

* * *

He was exhausted after the events of this afternoon. Mentally and physically, he was drained by the case he'd taken on. It was probably only his thirst to prove himself that had led him to take the patient in the first place: a fifteen year old female, who had been caught up in gang violence in the pedestrian precinct and ended up being stabbed in the shoulder. When Ethan had marched purposefully toward Jez and Iain, bringing the girl in from the ambulance, he had known full well that a lot of eyes were on him.

"Are you sure, mate?" Iain had asked. "You don't have to take this one."

"I'm fine, let's just get on with this, shall we?" Ethan had known also that his voice had been a little too sharp, and perhaps a giveaway of his discomfort around this situation.

But in the end, he had delivered the girl upstairs, alive and in one piece, in the company of her mother and her older brother, both of whom had been overcome with emotion that their loved one was out of the woods. Ethan had felt a sense of relief that he'd been successful, but this hadn't been without feeling slightly choked at the realisation that it could have been this way for Cal. But he couldn't afford to think like that; it wasn't fair on the team who had _obviously_ tried so hard to keep his brother alive, the same as for any other patient. Ethan couldn't torment himself forever with what might have been.

Regardless, sitting at home that evening, alone at last in the living room, he couldn't help but pinch the bridge of his nose and screw his eyes shut. Grief was like that – sometimes it was barely there, and at other times it came like a crescendo threatening to swallow you whole.

There was a knock at the front door, which pulled Ethan out of his head at once. Walking into the hall, he called gently up the stairs that he'd get the door, while checking in the mirror that he didn't look too much like he'd just stopped himself crying.

Outside the door stood a police officer, the same one who had dealt with everything after Cal had died. She wasn't an irregular face in the E.D. either; she'd been sent to deal with several incidents in the hospital, and had spent a lot of time conducting interviews and collecting evidence after Cal's death. Ethan greeted her politely but with restraint – he wasn't sure yet whether he'd forgiven her for the last time they'd spoken, when she'd had to break it to him and Lily that there wasn't enough, or indeed, any, evidence to incriminate Scott for what had happened to Cal.

"Dr Hardy – Ethan," she corrected herself. "I hope you'll forgive me, intruding into your evening. Can I come in, please?"

"Of course," Ethan said, stepping aside to let her into the hall. He was very glad of having hoovered yesterday. The house was comfortably messy, the kind of mess that made it quite clear that it was lived-in, and inhabited by small children, at that. "Can I make you a cup of tea?" he asked.

"No, no, it's quite alright. I won't need to stay long – just… I think you should probably sit down; I've brought some news about the case – about your brother."

Ethan's blood slowed down in his veins, slowly turning to ice. He stepped back, almost falling into the back of the front door.

"Ethan, are you okay?" the police officer asked. She was acutely aware of the colour quickly falling from his face. Her intention this evening had not been to cause an innocent man to pass out in his own home.

Her voice sounded far away, but Ethan breathed through his shock and slowly he felt himself returning to the room. He blinked at the police officer for a few seconds. "Sorry, I'm fine. I am, I'm alright. It's just a bit of a surprise, that's all. Can – can we wait a few minutes? Lily – my wife – she's upstairs, putting Will to bed. I don't know if I can listen to this alone."

"Of course we can," came the gentle reply.

They waited for perhaps five minutes, before Lily returned to the living room.

Lily froze in the doorway, seeing the police officer again. Confusion first, and then fear, hit her hard. It had been a while, and she wasn't sure she liked to be reminded of her conversations with this woman.

"How are you doing, Lily?"

It took Lily a moment to realise that she was being asked about her accident. Of course she was, what else? The last time she'd spoken to this woman, she'd been in a far worse state than she found herself in currently. "I'm much better now, thank you," Lily replied, feeling unsteady as she made her way to sit beside Ethan. Automatically, their hands locked together.

"You both look so afraid," the police officer said, "I promise I'm not here with bad news. I suppose there's no point dragging it out or beating around the bush. New evidence was uncovered this afternoon, by a source who wishes to remain anonymous for the time being. This evidence incriminates Scott Ellisson sufficiently that he has been arrested and charged with the murder of Caleb Knight."

* * *

 **Earlier that day**

 **Lily and Ethan were almost ready to send their resus patient upstairs, when Connie burst into the room, looking harassed.**

 **"Has anyone seen or heard from Sam this morning?" she asked, stress evident in her voice. She ran a hand through her hair, upsetting the elegant curls parted above her right eyebrow. Whatever was happening was serious, because usually she would never bring up members of the E.D. team in front of patients.**

 **Not one member of staff in resus spoke. There were several exchanged glances, but the one uniting factor was that nobody looked in Connie's direction. Lily looked at Ethan, and tilted her head almost undetectably to one side. Ethan looked down at once, which Lily took as an equivalent to shaking his head.**

 **There had been rumours flying around the department since before they had arrived, and that was at seven thirty, so who knew what time all this had kicked off. But there were definite advantages to being quiet: both Lily and Ethan had heard every single wild tale circulating that morning. All of them centred around Sam, and his suspicious absence.**

 **Connie looked directly at Lily and Ethan, whom she knew she could trust for information. "This is not the time to be quiet and respectful!" she said impatiently.**

 **Lily knew her cheeks were turning red. She closed her eyes for a moment, clenching her hands around the side of the bed in front of her. Completely unable and unwilling to look up to make eye contact with the Clinical Lead, she began to speak. "I heard, from upstairs, that he resigned last night, with immediate effect."**

* * *

 **After three days of being looked after, and, for all intents and purposes, thoroughly mothered, by Zoe, Dylan decided that enough was enough. He felt back to normal now, or as normal as things got inside his quite-anxiously-wired brain. He was also almost in acceptance that medication might be the way forward in dealing with the fact that his brain seemed, for now at least, to be wired more toward anxious than not. But it was time to get back to normal properly, and return to work,**

 **"I don't understand why you're coming too," he said as they walked up the road to the hospital. "I'm perfectly capable of going to work."**

 **Because he had improved so much from the first awful day of her return, Zoe could afford to speak to him in the same way she always used to. "But I'm not capable in the least of sitting on your boat all day, doing jack squat, that's why!" she said, pulling her box of cigarettes from her bag.**

 **Dylan rolled his eyes at her choice of accessory for their walk. "You know, I walk to work because I enjoy the fresh air, not because I enjoy you polluting it with nicotine."**

" **Ah, but you missed me when I wasn't here," Zoe replied. She lit her cigarette, took a long draw from it and blew a plume of smoke into the air. It didn't surprise her that Dylan said nothing in response to this. She had missed him too. "You know, it's not all about you! I do have other friends in the department, and it'll be nice to see them again."**

* * *

 **Walking through the front doors of the E.D., everyone was talking but it seemed that no-one was really listening.**

 **"Noel, what's going on?" Zoe asked. She looked around – grumpy words were being exchanged by waiting patients as well as members of staff; whatever was going on was having fallout on waiting times so was quickly going to make anyone who worked here extremely unpopular as far as patients were concerned.**

 **Noel held the phone slightly away from his ear. For all that he was stressed, it was obvious that he was trying to be kind to Zoe. "Nice to see you again, Dr Hanna. It's all a bit… Sam Strachan has gone, resigned, so we're a doctor down."**

" **Resigned?!" Zoe exclaimed. She supposed that she ought to be thankful that he'd waited until now to upset the balance of the department again. But still, how inconsiderate of him to leave before she'd had a chance to give him a piece of her mind, about the way he'd treated and put undue pressure on her friends.**

 **At that moment, Connie walked over, obviously to come and question reception as to when the much-needed locum might be arriving. She was glad that Dylan was returning today: she wasn't sure how they would have coped if they had been a consultant down as well as a registrar. "Any success?" she asked Noel.**

 **The receptionist shook his head.**

 **Connie sighed. She turned to Zoe and Dylan. "Are you okay?" she asked of Dylan, wanting to say more but trying hard not to make him uncomfortable. Although, she reminded herself, there was little chance of that happening, when he was brushing shoulders with the other half of his double act, and under no threat whatsoever of Sam Strachan breathing down his neck. "Feeling better?"**

" **I'm fine," he assured her. "I will endeavour not to go crazy in the middle of your department, today."**

" **You did no such thing, and that's the last I want to hear of you pulling yourself apart like that. If you need to take a break, do it. We might be short-staffed, but for your piece of mind, we will cope for ten, fifteen minutes, whatever. Onwards and upwards though?" She hoped she didn't sound blasé about what had happened, because the last thing she wanted was to be insincere about Dylan's mental health.**

" **Onwards and upwards," Dylan agreed, although there was very little expression in his voice.**

 **Noel was still battling to find a locum registrar, but all of a sudden, Zoe took the phone from his hand and returned it to its cradle.**

" **Zoe, what do you think you're doing?" Connie said, astonished.**

 **Zoe was already taking off her jacket and removing a delicate silver bracelet from her wrist. "I thought you needed a locum?" She smiled hopefully.**

 **Connie, slightly thunderstruck, took a moment before her face showed any sign of relief. "You haven't changed a bit, have you? Still drama first, explanations later. Are you sure?"**

" **Would I offer, if I wasn't? It'll make your life easier: you won't have to show a new body round the place or tell them how things work around here. You can jump through Hanssen's hoops later." Zoe seemed almost to be talking Connie into it, wheedling to get her way.**

 **The Clinical Lead did not need much persuading. "Fine. Just don't do anything stupid. I might not have to jump through too many of Hanssen's hoops, as you put it, but I still don't want the burden of mountainous paperwork, should anything go wrong on your watch."**

 **Zoe smiled warmly. "So, where do you want me first?"**

 **Walking to the staff room to put her things into Dylan's locker, Zoe knew she wouldn't have to wait long for a sarcastic comment.**

" **How do you do that?" Dylan asked, falling into step with her.**

" **How do I do what?"**

" **How do you manage to be so damned problematic, and** _ **still**_ **have everyone eating out of the palm of your hand?"**

 **Zoe smiled slyly. "Wouldn't you like to know!"**

* * *

 **Dylan had thought that Connie's acceptance of him taking a break if he needed it was nothing more than a platitude; he hadn't believed or wanted to believe that throwing himself back into the deep end of the E.D. might be completely overwhelming. He had assumed there would be no better exposure therapy than just carrying on as if nothing happened. On reflection, he probably should have learned as much from the last time.**

 **It was early afternoon, and he was striding out of the front doors without giving thought to the fact he was supposed to tell someone where he was going. He wasn't panicking, as such, and Dylan thought that maybe he should be grateful for that. But he couldn't be indebted to that fact, when, instead of panicking, he was just unbearably anxious. 'Just' in the loosest sense of the word, because if anything merited use of that word, it probably wasn't this stomach-churning, reality-bending anxiety. The E.D. had become too loud, all at once, sending his head spiralling into thoughts he couldn't handle when surrounded by people who, with the exception of Zoe, Lily, and possibly Connie, didn't care about him in the slightest. His day had not been improved by the malicious silences which still followed him like an unwelcome shadow. He wanted to shout at them, tell them that it wasn't news to him that he was probably crazy. He didn't need their obvious contempt of him to add to what he was only just managing to keep a lid upon.**

 **It was as though his feet were carrying him on divine instruction – he couldn't think of another reason why he would find himself in this exact spot, the place where he had found Cal bleeding out on the concrete. There were still flowers and cards against the wall, and Cal's photograph in a simple frame. Dylan was glad it hadn't rained in a few days: reaching the end of what pacing could do for his anxiety, he sat down on the pavement, resting his head back against the wall.** _ **If anyone saw you now,**_ **that familiar unkind voice reminded him,** _ **they'd think you looked terribly arrogant, sitting like that, where he lay dying.**_ **It wasn't his first and of course, it wouldn't be his last intrusive thought, but it was unpleasant all the same. Dylan folded slightly, his chin touching his chest and his linked hands on the back of his neck. If he couldn't get used to working hereagain, if he couldn't make peace with what had happened, then what would he do next? In a sudden moment of madness, he wondered whether, despite his fear of flying, whether Zoe might pull some strings with Nick and secure him a job out in Michigan, far away from all of this. But he couldn't sit for thirteen hours on a likely turbulent flight. And he couldn't walk away from Holby, not really. He didn't have many people to say goodbye to, only Lily and Will, andRita, if he wouldn't be too afraid to pick up the phone and tell her that he was chickening out of everything here. But he couldn't just leave his job. Rita might have had leverage with Connie to work a tiny notice, but he didn't have that. And he had the boat to dealwith, and Alice! Who would look after her, if he decided to drop everything and move halfway around the world?**

* * *

 **Zoe looked at her watch. Dylan had been a while. She narrowed her eyebrows, and stepped out of the ED. Looking across the tarmac, she couldn't see him anywhere. Hopefully he wasn't alone, panicking somewhere.**

 **"Dylan?" she called uncertainly, unsurprised when no response came.**

* * *

 **Dylan thought that he might have heard Zoe's voice, carried on the wind from the direction of the doors. He looked up, but there was an ambulance in the way. He couldn't see anything.**

 **And then he saw something that might just qualify for the cliché of "everything."**

 **A shirt, or was it a jacket? It was grey, or perhaps it should have been, were it not for the presence of a decaying slick of blood staining the fabric. It was hanging lazily out of the bin closest to where Dylan was sitting, and its appearance was enough to shake Dylan straight out of his anxious state and bring him back to life. He stood up, and cautious approached the bin. He looked down onto it. This area hadn't been long re-opened to the public, it had been a crime scene for a long time. And it looked as though something vital had been missed from the "scouring" which had apparently been undertaken by the Scene of Crime Officers in the weeks after Cal had been killed.**

 **If Dylan wasn't very much mistaken, he was staring at the jacket Scott Ellisson had been wearing on the night his father died, and the night that Cal had lost his life.**

 **Careful not to touch the jacket, for fear of somehow being wrongly implicated in all of this, Dylan walked around the bin to get a good look at the jacket. He wanted to be sure, but in his heart of hearts he had known he was right from the moment his eyes fell upon it. Hands shaking, he pulled his phone from his trouser pocket, and from his opposite pocket, the little card he hadn't been able to put down since it was handed to him by that young police officer the first time he had been questioned about what happened to Cal. It took three rings for the call to be answered – which was enough for Dylan to feel his heart rising into his throat.**

 **"Hello? This – My name is Dr Dylan Keogh and I'm calling from Holby City Hospital. I think – I think I've found something relating to the murder of my colleague, Dr Caleb Knight."**

* * *

Back to present

At first, neither Lily nor Ethan could believe what they were hearing. They sat numbly, in complete silence.

"I know it must be difficult to take in," the police officer said gently, "but you need to know that I think it would be almost impossible for Mr Ellisson to be found innocent, after this."

"Do you truly mean that?" Lily said, knowing that Ethan wouldn't be able to say anything more to this woman, not tonight.

The police officer bit her lip. "I'm not in the habit of lying about things like this."

Lily turned to Ethan, and gripped his hand. "I think it's all nearly over," she whispered. And then to the officer, she said, "I'll show you out, thank you so much for your time."

Lily had no sooner pressed the front door closed when she heard Ethan coming out of the living room. She turned around, and she could tell at once from his face that the news had sunk in. There were tears of relief in his eyes, and it was clear that he felt conflicted over whether he could smile or not. His smile was winning though. He came up to her and picked her up, lifting her off the floor before spinning her around with joy.

"It's real, Lily," he said, keeping her off the ground but leaning her slightly against the wall. "He's going to prison for what he did, I can feel it." He was almost giddied by the release that the news had brought him. He kissed Lily, and then both of them were smiling, eyes closed, immobilised by the sheer liberation of knowing that someone was going to be held accountable for the pain they had felt in these last few months.

Lily broke up the kiss, fantastic as it was. "I know it's real, now put me down, before we wake the kids up!" But she wasn't cross. She couldn't be cross with him. Not when this news seemed to have taken away the years that the stress of his brother's death had put on him.

He didn't put her down. He carried her back into the living room and dropped her down on the sofa, before flopping down next to her, his smile still wide on his face. He looked up at the ceiling, stretching his arms behind his head. "Oh. My. Goodness," he said excitedly. He took a deep breath in, and let it out all at once. He looked at his wife. "If Cal was here, he'd probably get really drunk, to celebrate."

"I don't know about drunk," Lily replied drily, "since I seem to remember several instances in which copious amounts of alcohol have served neither of us well." She raised one eyebrow, as if daring him to disagree. "However, if celebration is what you're after, I can probably offer you a glass of white wine from the fridge, and that's about as exciting as you're going to get."

"What's your sarcasm for?" Ethan asked, all innocence. "That sounds absolutely perfect."

* * *

Zoe looked up from her phone, with which she'd been reading a news update. "Dylan?" she called, knowing that he was getting changed after a shower and might not have heard her. "Dylan?" Her voice was louder this time.

Dylan opened his bedroom door. His hair was still wet, but he was fully dressed. "What?"

"Someone's been arrested and charged for what happened to Cal." She'd read the article twice, and still the news was stubbornly refusing to settle in her head.

"Good, I should think so too." He sounded bored, but Zoe knew at once that he was putting it on. "Is that all? My hair is dripping down my back."

"As if you've _ever_ cared about that!" Zoe said, mocking him gently. "You're avoiding something, Keogh, and I will find out."

Dylan hummed in response, seemingly not caring, before he rolled his eyes and closed the door.

Zoe read the news update again. _Ellisson was arrested after a vital piece of evidence was found outside Holby City Hospital, which tied him to the area and the murder of Dr Caleb Knight, who had been a registrar in the hospital's emergency department. The person who found the conclusive evidence chose to remain anonymous, however we have reason to believe it may have been another doctor from the hospital. Questions will no doubt be raised within the police force as to why it took this length of time for such evidence to be uncovered._

That afternoon, she had gone looking for Dylan, after he had excused himself from resus and taken a long time to return. She hadn't looked very far, because no sooner had she come outside, Iain and Jez had pulled up with a new patient. Could it be the case that Dylan was the one who had found this 'vital' piece of evidence? To her knowledge, no-one else had left the department at that time, and certainly no-one would have ended up in that precise spot.

She got up from the sofa and strode across the room. Banging on his bedroom door, she said, loudly and with great confidence: "Alright, Detective Inspector Keogh, the game is up. I know it was you."

On the other side of the door, Dylan froze. He felt his heart beat faster and harder. He refused to allow himself to panic over _this._ It was Zoe, behind the door, not a mob of journalists, not a crowd from work ready to run him into the ground. It was his best friend. And still, he found himself slumping against the back of his bedroom door, sitting against the wood to block out the world. His thoughts were swirling dangerously. He'd done a good thing, hadn't he? In finding that shirt, he had pretty much ensured that Scott would be sent down for what he did. But the fact that he had only found it because he was outside the E.D., panicking, lessened its impact significantly. A very small part of his brain was mumbling away about this being an unfair payback to Ethan for the way he had acted lately, and it was this part that Dylan wanted to silence the most. The rest was inane chatter, probably something he could deal with, but he couldn't stand his mind punishing him for something that he knew intrinsically was the right thing to do.

On her side of the door, Zoe heard Dylan sit down heavily on the floor. She tried the door again, and rolled her eyes when she realised that her friend was blocking her entry to his room in this most basic, almost childlike way. Defeated, she sat against this side of the door.

"Do you want to tell what's going on in that head of yours?" she said, loud enough that she would be heard, but careful to be gentle as well.

"Not particularly, no." Dylan replied straight away. His knees were pulled up to his chest and his head rested on his hands. Then, words were tumbling from his mouth before he had a chance to keep tabs on what he was saying. "I chose my right to remain anonymous, okay? I've seen the same report you were reading, and I guess that right has been taken away from me by some cowardly, scummy journalist. I didn't want anyone to know it was me. I've done enough, I don't want to be involved anymore. I only found that shirt because I was outside the E.D., not coping with being at work, and that completely takes away whatever valour and brilliance you've no doubt attached to me picking up the phone to call that officer."

"Dylan, stop, please," said Zoe. "Let me tell you my spin on what you just said, before you tear yourself to bits. I can't stand listening to you tell yourself that your panic in any way detracts from the fact you did a good thing today. I don't care how many mean words have crossed between you and Ethan, but I _know_ that if he knew you were the one to put this Scott Ellisson in prison, then none of that would matter anymore. And it might be hard for you to take, but you can't help but be involved in this. You were there when Cal died, so you're always going to be implicated somehow. No matter what your brain tries to tell you, it's lying, you did what you could, the same as anyone else would have done. I'm so proud of you for trying. No-one could ask any more of you than that. But today, you went above and beyond. What you did was important, and it matters, okay?"

Still struggling to believe everything that he was being told, Dylan felt ashamed of the tear that snaked its way down his cheek. He scrubbed it away without remorse. "I wish you didn't have to go back," he said, his voice gruff but his tone indifferent; he definitely hadn't approved this sentence before it had escaped his brain.

Zoe stood up silently. "Dylan, open the door, or so help me God I will find a way to break it down whether you're sitting behind it or not."

Dylan let out a breath through his nose, almost laughing. He stood up slowly, quietly, hoping to catch Zoe out. "Well, since you asked so nicely," he said sarcastically. He finally opened the door, hoping that she might still be sitting there and might fall backwards. He was surprised to see her standing, facing him.

She chose deliberately not to hug him, because he so rarely appreciated it. "You can't get me that easily." Examining his appearance closely, she broke the best news Dylan had heard in a long time. "Who said I was going back? I haven't booked my return flight yet."

It took Zoe greatly by surprise to feel her best friend suddenly holding her in a tight hug.


	22. Chapter 22

**It's been weird writing this story in the full knowledge that I'm attempting to rewrite the canon – here's my final contribution to the Scott storyline. I think it's how I would have liked that arc to end, although I don't mean that I don't like the way the show is doing things at the moment! There will be an epilogue after this chapter, and then this epic saga of three fics will finally be complete.**

 **(Oh, and I feel very obliged to give a disclaimer before this chapter – my legal knowledge comes exclusively from Legally Blonde, Sherlock and Lewis; I am a trainee primary teacher so I have little working knowledge of the criminal justice system at the best of times; and I have relied heavily upon the internet to write this chapter. Please do not come after me, angry mob style, for my impending inaccuracies!)**

* * *

Looking at herself in the mirror, Lily considered how much she had grown up in the time since she and Ethan had become a couple. Back then, she was still an F2, wearing scrubs every day and still looking like a student – or, at least, that was how she saw herself, looking back now. It was the day of Scott Ellisson's trial, and although Lily had agonised over how much or how little to dress up to the occasion, her hair and make-up were no different than any other working day. A slick of eyeliner applied with an expertly steady hand, neutral lipstick and a blissfully clear complexion. Her hair was straightened, and pinned back from her face because today of all days, she refused to hide.

She had always known that she would be in attendance when this day came, but the same could not have been said for her husband. Ethan had been incredibly indecisive about it.

Even now, driving him to the court, she could tell that he was skittish and looking for any reason to turn around and go home. No matter how much he continued to insist that it wouldn't change a thing for him, psychologically, Lily was certain he would regret not getting closure as final as this could be. He kept changing the radio station, his patience with everything so painfully short that Lily hardly dared speak to him. When he finally settled, leaving the radio tuned to a local station, she waited until they were at a set of traffic lights before turning away from the steering wheel to look at him.

"Stop it," she said, hoping her voice sounding firm instead of pleading. "Stop tearing yourself up like this. There is nothing that I want to do less than dredge up everything that happened that night, you're not alone in that. But we're going, this is the final part of this god-awful story we're trapped in. It's nearly over, I can feel it." He seemed to relax as she spoke, which she was glad about. She didn't want to pull the trump card that he had to be in attendance. As frightening as it would be, he had to be there to give evidence against Scott.

It was a stark reminder of what was to come, when the hourly news update started with words neither of them wished to hear. " _This morning is the crown court trial against Scott Ellisson, accused of murdering the A &E registrar Dr Caleb Knight, who was killed at the end of April this year." _

The first song to play after the news was _Champagne Supernova_ , by Oasis. Lily stole a glance at Ethan as she drove along, trying to gauge how he was feeling. She was so glad that Charlie and Duffy had offered to take the children today – she didn't want this day anywhere near their precious memories. Once they were older, she'd never be able to shield them from what had happened, but it made her feel better to know that today, they were safe and far away from it.

 _Someday you will find me  
Caught beneath the landslide  
In a champagne supernova in the sky_

She cleared her throat. "You can turn it over, it's okay. Shall I?"

"No, I – it's nice, in a weird sort of way." Ethan took a very pleasant solace from hearing this song again. They had played it at Cal's funeral, it had been one of his favourites. It felt right, to hear it this morning, when with any luck, they were going to lay his memory properly to rest. He put his head back against the seat.

* * *

In the car park near the court, there was a final fearful moment. Lily and Ethan were standing by the car, leaning against it, trying to kill some time because they didn't want to have to walk through the swarming journalists outside the court just yet.

"I can't do this," Ethan said, out of the blue, having been quite calm up until this point. "I don't want to do this. I can't."

"You can," Lily urged. She took his hand from by his side. "I know that it's scary, and I wish I could be with you. It frightens me too, that we have to be in a room with him, with no escape. You don't have to look at him. Pick someone else in the room to speak to, and just look at them instead. Look at me, if there's really no-one better to look at."

Ethan almost laughed. "One of these days, you might get over your desperation to put yourself down. You're the only one I ever want to look at. Goodness, one day you might finally realise that you're the brightest star in my sky."

Lily kissed his forehead, standing on tiptoe because she'd chosen to wear flat shoes today.

* * *

She had expected it fully, but still, to be separated from Ethan once they were in the court unsettled her. The room was slightly shabby, but there was still an imposing grandeur about it. If these wood-panelled walls could talk, what stories would they tell? How many lives had been irrevocably changed within the confines of this courtroom?

People were milling about, taking their seats. Lily felt very alone, despite the room slowly filling.

She saw Mickey Ellisson, Scott's brother, sitting a long way from his mother. Even from here, she could see that his eyes were red. She wondered whether he was struggling to reconcile the murder trial with the knowledge that it was his own brother being tried. She knew she still couldn't quite comprehend that all this was because her brother-in-law had met such a dreadful end. She still half-expected him to walk into the staffroom at work, to be mildly embarrassed by the photographs of him that were collecting on the noticeboard, to be flirting with any attractive woman who so much as breathed in his vicinity. Lily couldn't reconcile the repulsive Scott with his gentler brother. She'd seen Mickey around the hospital, with Jez. There was undeniable chemistry between those two. She couldn't link Mickey, such an apparently good man, with what his brother was capable of.

Denise Ellisson, in contrast to Mickey, looked angry. Lily looked away from her at once, and was relieved to meet Zoe's eyes. She watched as the consultant pulled her phone from the inside pocket of her leather jacket and began to type something. Almost immediately, someone reminded Zoe that she couldn't have her phone out in here. But still, a couple of seconds later, Lily's phone vibrated in her bag at her feet. Covertly, she checked it.

 _It will be okay. Try to stop worrying._

Lily looked back up to Zoe, across the room from her. She shot her an agonising look. How could she stop worrying, knowing that today could be the day Scott finally walked away from his crime forever? Both she and Ethan had been advised that it was extremely unlikely, but the possibility of a not-guilty verdict being returned would not disappear unless the jury made the opposite decision.

* * *

Despite knowing what was coming, Lily couldn't help filling with fear as the charges against Scott were read out. She closed her eyes to try and protect herself from the horror of the words, but it still chilled her to the bone to hear 'the attempted murder of Dr Ethan Hardy' along with a graphic description of what happened on the night Cal was killed.

It shocked her that Scott's lawyer presented the statement of issues with the charges so clearly. She had almost expected this case to win itself – how could Scott plead any other way than 'guilty' with the vast balance of evidence against him? But if the case hadn't concerned her family, Lily might have found herself compelled by what the defence lawyer was saying, such was his unflinching clarity.

"Mr Ellisson was nowhere near that area of the hospital on that night. He was inside the Emergency Department following the death of his father – and alleges that during this incredibly difficult personal time, Dr Knight was unduly forceful and picked a fight with Mr Ellisson, which fully accounts for the extraneous injuries founds on the body during the post-mortem examination."

Lily felt sick, breathing shallowly through her nose. What if the jury began to believe him too? She forced herself to push it all away. She had to trust in the truth, in the cold, hard evidence, not the spin that this lawyer had been paid to create. She didn't think she could bear the thought of the jury, people who knew nothing about Cal or their family, believing that Cal would do anything of that sort. If they made a judgement on Cal's character, this whole trial might be for nothing.

* * *

The case for the prosecution began, and the tide turned strongly back in their favour.

* * *

Ethan took a deep breath. "I swear by God that the evidence I shall give shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." He felt slightly unsteady on his feet, trying not to concentrate on precisely how many eyes were on him at the present moment. The truth, he quickly realised, was not as easy as it might seem: he paused frequently to make sure that he was speaking precisely and not embellishing the story in any way. It made him uncomfortable, to recount how threatening Scott had behaved toward him on the night of Cal's death. He couldn't bear to look up to Lily, sitting high in the public gallery. He hadn't even told her all of this, so he didn't want to know how she was reacting to hearing it all for the first time in so public a forum. The worst was admitting aloud that he had made mistakes with Roy Ellisson's treatment.

The prosecution lawyer was quick to ensure the record was set straight. "The jury must note that these 'mistakes' were dealt with internally at Holby City Hospital, and no further action was taken against Dr Ethan Hardy following the death of Mr Roy Ellisson."

When lawyer for the defence stood up to cross-examine him, Ethan wiped his hands nervously on his trousers. He knew that he hadn't told any lies, that his evidence was watertight. He had been through it enough times with their prosecution lawyer, a woman in her early forties and a very expensive suit, to have been reassured that it would take a particularly ruthless defence lawyer to find any hole in his evidence.

"If you felt significantly threatened on hospital premises by Mr Ellisson, Dr Hardy, why did you not follow hospital protocol and call the police?"

Ethan's shoulders dropped slightly, but Lily was certain that she was the only one to notice this. She watched him look down at the floor, and wanted to ground to swallow her up too. She knew exactly the reason why Ethan would not have called the police on that night, and it had nothing to do with his competency as a doctor, or his ability to follow protocol, and everything to do with her being rushed into resus, moments from cardiac arrest. She listened to him explain this, and closed her eyes, her head bowed.

"This is not relevant to the death of my brother." Ethan closed his explanation with such strength that Lily felt a tear escape down her cheek. She linked her hands. Hopefully anyone looking at her would assume that she was praying, rather than trying her hardest to stay in one piece.

There was a sudden disturbance in the public gallery across the room from where Lily was sitting. She looked up at once, to see Denise Ellisson standing up, furious.

"It's relevant to the death of my Roy, though! Do you care about that, _Doctor_? Does it matter to you that my husband is dead? No, of course not, not when your precious Chinese wife is just fine!"

Ethan crumpled, silent. Lily didn't dare look up again, hoping that no-one would attach this outburst to the colour of her skin. Eyes screwed shut, she heard something happening over where Mrs Ellisson had been sitting. When Lily opened her eyes, the woman had been removed from the room.

Finally, it seemed that Ethan's ordeal was over, and he retired from the front of the room gladly.

Where listening to her husband's evidence had filled her with fear, warm relief flooded outwards from Lily's mind as she listened to the prosecution lawyer reading a statement from Mrs Beauchamp. It was more a statement to attest to Cal's good character then to persuade anyone of what happened on the night of his murder. She hoped that these well-meaning words would be enough to convince the jury that Cal had perhaps been impulsive, but he was more instinctive, fiercely protective of his family but never a violent man.

The issue of Cal 'picking a fight' with Scott was shortly dismissed too; after examination of CCTV around the E.D. on that night, it was plain that this was a completely unsubstantiated claim. In fact, the only violent conduct on Cal's part, that any of the investigators had found, was an incident at the age of seventeen, when Cal had thrown a few punches in defence of his brother.

At this point, Lily was forced to cover her mouth with her hand, gloved in the cuff of her sleeve. The only times she could remember either brother reaching a point where they felt it necessary to start punching people was in situations where the only people they were fighting was each other. She was exceptionally glad that these events were off the record.

The post-mortem report was also examined in detail and this continued to rip apart Scott's defence. It was ruled that the extraneous injuries to his stab wound had been sustained at the same time as the fatal damage. The pathologists decided that these wounds were suffered as a result of self-defence. Lily knew that this was important, but it also did nothing to prove or disprove the involvement of Scott Ellisson, who still looked smug, as arrogant as it was possible to be while on trial for murder.

* * *

What both Lily and Ethan had failed to remember was the piece of evidence which had brought them to court today had not yet been revealed. Although they were sitting well apart, their reactions to the arrival of the next witness were identical. Shock, horror, and all but picking their jaws up off the floor.

* * *

Dylan stepped up to the front of the courtroom. "I do solemnly, sincerely and truly declare and affirm that the evidence I shall give shall be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth." _Right, this is it,_ he thought. _Pull yourself together, this is important. It matters to you, and it bloody well matters to them._ He hadn't really thought of it before, but could this act be the final repair to his tattered relationship with Ethan? Ethan was a man of strong morals though, and being lied to like he had been was probably unforgiveable. There was nothing left for Dylan to do, except tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

It didn't surprise Zoe in the slightest that Dylan prepared to give his evidence under secular affirmation rather than under oath. While Ethan may have taken a little solace from faith, this would never be the case for Dylan.

At first, Dylan found it easy to give his statement. It simply required him to be cold, clinical and honest, three things he rarely struggled with. It was during the cross-examination, when he was asked to tell the jury exactly why he found himself in that place on the hospital's grounds. It was like being thrown to the lions: there were some very unsympathetic colleagues in the public gallery of the courtroom, not to mention journalists who would love to pick up on any weakness he showed. If he wasn't careful, his words had the possibility to end his career, or his career in Holby at the very least.

He looked around the room, and spotted Lily. Her face showed exactly how draining this process was becoming for her. It couldn't have been easy, to have all this out in the open, recounted and re-examined in such minute detail. And yet there was still so much hope left in her expression. How did she manage that?

Still silent, his eyes moved to Zoe, who met his gaze. Her face told him all too clearly that he'd been quiet for too long. _Start talking, Dylan!_ she mouthed deliberately.

"Dr Keogh," the defence lawyer drawled, "may I remind you that you are under affirmation, and as such you are required and obliged to give an answer when one is asked of you." The lawyer was an impatient man in his middle-fifties, drumming his fingers on the desk in front of him.

Dylan would rather 'go crazy' in the middle of the E.D. again than have to go through this. He'd already said most of it, he just had to finish the job. Admitting his guilt about letting Cal go was difficult, knowing that his colleagues were listening, but it had to be done. More difficult was impressing upon them the impact of finding a member of your team, bleeding out and alone on the pavement, which was vital if they were to understand what he was going to explain lastly. He took a deep breath before continuing.

"I have an anxiety disorder, and on the day that I found that jacket, I had only just returned to work after a short period of absence as a direct consequence of my mental health. I thought that to carry on as normal would be easy. I'm not," he conceded, looking briefly at Zoe and hoping her was truly listening to him, "one to easily admit a need for help of any sort. Which is why, when I found myself feeling overwhelmed, completely out of my depth, I left the department, alone. I was… dizzy, slightly nauseous, so I paid little attention to my surroundings. It was only afterwards that I realised exactly where I was. That's why I was in that place, and that is when I found the jacket."

Lily's eyes were wide. She couldn't believe that Dylan had just said that, openly, in front of a number of people they worked with who had been less than sympathetic towards him in recent months.

It turned Zoe's stomach to hear Scott's lawyer have a field day with this information. He started spouting such rubbish that she was all but prepared to stand up and start shouting back, save for the fact that she would be thrown out just the same as Denise Ellisson had been.

"I would suggest that perhaps Dr Keogh is not of sound mind to be giving evidence in a crown court hearing, or indeed any court of law," he said lazily.

Lily gasped out loud when Ethan stood up and began protesting the injustice of this statement. Part of her was very proud of him (after all, this showed a great improvement in the relations between the two men) but mostly she was afraid that he would be removed from the room and his evidence might be discounted entirely. But it seemed luck was on their side, because although Ethan's outburst was struck from the record, he was allowed to stay on the condition that he did not repeat the behaviour.

The defence lawyer carried on, regardless. "Surely someone with access to the mortuary, someone such as Dr Keogh here, would find it easy to plant any old garment on the crime scene, drenched accurately with the blood of Caleb Knight. It is evident that the staff of Holby City Hospital's Emergency Department hold some kind of grudge against the Ellisson family."

"I will not allow this campaign of harassment towards Dr Keogh to continue," the judge said, cutting through the murmurs of dissent in the courtroom. She turned to the defence lawyer. "Your statement is nothing more than speculation, and poor, ridiculous speculation at that. Dr Keogh is a consultant in emergency medicine. I hardly believe that if he was 'not of sound mind,' as you so unceremoniously put it, he would not stand here as a witness with that position of responsibility still an intrinsic part of his identity. Sit down, sir."

Zoe found it quite hard to conceal her joy at these words.

* * *

The final evidence was damning. It was a series of still from CCTV footage, archived from the various times Scott Ellisson had been in trouble with the police before. In every single one of the selected photographs, all on different days over a period of three and a half years, he was wearing the same jacket which lay in the transparent evidence bag.

Lily didn't realise she had been holding her breath. But after the last photo had been shown, she let out a long breath and quickly inhaled again, and felt her face fizzing. But she didn't care: it was a good feeling, despite it being an obvious sign of not breathing normally. It was also a sign of all this being closer to over. She yearned for the moment that she would be reunited with Ethan, surely not far away now, when they could just go home knowing the world was as right as it could be.

She might have been feeling exciting in anticipation of the end of the trial, but it wasn't over yet. They had to sit through an audio recording of Scott's interview with the police, immediately after his arrest. It was harrowing, to hear how quickly he got angry, furious, raging. It was quiet enough in the courtroom that a pin could have been heard falling to the tiled floor.

 _"This interview has been truncated due to violence demonstrated by the suspect, Mr Scott Ellisson, towards the conducting officer,"_ a voice on the recording said.

Zoe was, in part, relieved, after hearing the recording. There was no way that the jury could deem Scott anything other than vicious, after this. But she was also shocked to her core, that he had got away with his crime for so long, that he had been walking the streets as a free man for all these months. No wonder Ethan had been under so much stress, knowing that the man who murdered his brother, who seemed perfectly capable of attacking someone else, was free.

She was broken from her thoughts by the words of the prosecution lawyer, which signalled the start of a break in proceedings. "That is the case for the prosecution.

* * *

Lily rushed from her seat at once, eager to find Ethan. She ran into him outside the courtroom, and felt so safe being held in his arms that she was powerless to do anything but just hug him back. She hadn't realised how frightening it would be, to sit in the same room as Scott and watch him try to squirm out of what he had done. But it was looking deeply unlikely now that he would get away with it.

In the queue to buy two cups of tea, Lily was barely concentrating, which was why she had to ask the cashier to repeat himself.

"I said, you've got nothing to pay. Your bill's been paid forward, by that chap up there," he said, jerking his head to his left.

Lily looked in that direction, and saw Dylan, looking sheepish and holding his own coffee.

He looked away quickly, but he wasn't going to get away that easily.

"Thank you, you didn't have to do that," Lily said to him as she reached his side.

"Well, I wanted to. It can't have been easy in there, listening to all that."

Lily was slightly incredulous. "Are we going to skim over the fact that you pretty much saved the day? You were brilliant, not just today, but finding that jacket, and talking to the police. Brilliant," she repeated, so he knew that she wasn't just saying it to be kind.

"I didn't feel particularly brilliant," Dylan said shortly. He rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand.

"You don't have to feel it," reassured Lily. "Right now, it ought to be enough to know that you _were._ You did so well in there, they asked you some awful things. And I can't make it obvious enough that I'm incredibly grateful for what you did, that day outside the E.D." She looked over her glasses at him. "Overwhelmed or not, you are still a good person. Don't forget that." And then she was gone, back through the hundreds of people milling about in the recess of the trial.

Dylan was stunned.

* * *

Perhaps it was the plan all along, or maybe, arrogant as he was, Scott's lawyer knew when a prosecution was too strong to be overturned. No defence evidence was presented, which Ethan took as being good as an admission of guilt. He thought the case was won.

The closing speeches of the case passed without event, but neither Lily nor Ethan were listening really, having taken in so much today already. They couldn't take any more.

When the jury retired to come to a verdict, the courtroom emptied again, except for Lily and Ethan, who sat next to each other, their hands locked together.

For a few minutes, Zoe sat with them, trying to take their minds off it, but this was an impossible task. She retreated: in this period of strange, uncomfortable, certain uncertainty, they only needed each other.

She joined Dylan, who was sitting outside the court building.

"It's hateful in there," he said as she sat next to him on the steps. "So many people, all pushing and pulling, and I can't tell who's asking stupid questions because they want to know, and who's asking stupid questions because they are a journalist trying to trip me up."

Zoe lit a cigarette. "You did well, in there," she said quietly.

"Thank you."

* * *

There was an unbearable tension as everyone filed back into the courtroom for the final time.

The spokeswoman for the jury was a slight woman with flyaway blonde hair poorly tamed by the bun she had tried to tie it into. "Our decision was unanimous," she began simply.

Lily gripped Ethan's hands tightly. His eyes were squeezed shut, and he seemed not to breathe.

"And what is your verdict?" the judge asked.

Zoe covered her mouth with both hands.

Dylan steepled his fingers, breathing deeply.

The silence in the courtroom was palpable, until after what felt like an age, the spokeswoman delivered her answer.

"Guilty."

* * *

Ethan and Lily walked out of the courtroom feeling dazed. Out in the blazing sunlight of late August, they stood apart, breathing in fresh air, more appreciative than ever before of quite how much they had. After all of this, after everything they'd been through, they still had each other. Ethan turned to his wife, whose face was turned joyously into the sun's rays. He reached for her hand, and she held it without hesitation. It meant nothing, and everything.

Time had stood still in the courtroom, but now it seemed to be catching up at hyper-speed.

Across the road, a young couple emerged from the registry office, newly married, flanked by friends and family. An ambulance tore through the clouds of confetti, sirens screaming.

Ethan's pager buzzed from the depths of his inside pocket. A few seconds later, so did Lily's.

"Life goes on," she said quietly. "Our life goes on."


	23. Chapter 23 - Epilogue

**Last chapter! Good grief, this seems to have come around so quickly! I hope it lives up to last-chapter expectations, and manages to give everyone a suitable ending.**

 **(I'm fully aware that in this chapter I have used a character who has never been in Casualty, and who is now sadly absent from Holby City too. It's a fleeting reference, forgive me, I think had he still been a character, if this was canon, Ethan would have wanted him present for what's about to happen.)**

* * *

Ethan woke up early on the morning of the balloon release. He was due in work at eight o'clock, so crept downstairs without disturbing anyone in order to get some breakfast and a cup of tea. A newspaper still lay on the breakfast bar, folded carefully to preserve the front page. It was days old now; almost a full week had passed since the headlines had read **"LIFE SENTENCE FOR MURDERER OF MUCH-LOVED DOCTOR"** Happily, the picture which had run under this headline was one of Cal, smiling, from the early days of his career in the E.D. It was somewhat fitting, and appropriate, to Lily and Ethan at least, that Scott's picture was small and inset at the bottom left corner of the article. He _was_ small and significant now, a much less important part of their life. That chapter was well and truly over. Or, rather, it would be, once today was also behind them. To release balloons in his memory was the final closure that both he and Lily needed.

* * *

Lily didn't wake until her husband came back upstairs to kiss her goodbye, bringing her a cup of tea of her own.

"Mmm, thank you," she said sleepily, rubbing her eyes. She stretched her arms out lazily, touching the palms of her hands to the headboard behind her pillow. There was more she wanted to say, but she was in that place between sleep and awake that slurred speech and jumbled words, neither of which were particularly conducive to convincing one's husband that he still had bridges to build with their colleagues.

Ethan knelt on the bed, leaning down towards his wife. He consented to her adjustment of his collar, and was taken pleasantly by surprise when she gently tugged his shirt towards her. He kissed her forehead, then the space between her eyebrows, and then the tip of her nose. "It's only until two o'clock," he whispered, "it's not like we're apart _all_ day."

"I know," Lily replied. When he spoke, she could smell spearmint toothpaste, and she was very conscious all of a sudden of only just having woken up. Morning breath. Internally, she cringed, but her exterior was calm, as she kissed his cheek. "I love you."

* * *

It was only a matter of days now until Will started school. This was a fact which disconcerted Lily greatly, but she refused to bow down to societal expectations which demanded she make tearful comments about how quickly her little boy had grown up. Her gentle musings about Will still being her 'baby' remained unreservedly private.

But this didn't make her morning's task any easier. Will was occupied with sorting a set of Gruffalo snap cards, muttering parts of the story to himself and separating out the characters and different coloured cards. Lizzie was still chasing Cheerios around the tray of her high chair. And Lily stood in the kitchen, half an eye on each child, leaving one eye and most of her concentration to dedicate to ironing name tapes into Will's new school uniform. Impossibly little white polo shirts, bottle green jumpers and pairs of grey trousers, which Lily was under no illusions would probably only fit her son until mid-January. She even wrote **WILLIAM HARDY** into the insoles of a pair of black, Velcro-fastening shoes.

These shoes had been the source of brief, hot debate between Lily and Ethan, which the former had won hands down. Of course, laced shoes were smarter, but Velcro had to be the fastening of choice for three reasons. One: Will was four years old and would hold no personal preference over his parents' views on 'smart' and 'slightly less smart' pairs of shoes. Two: Will was only four years old and therefore could not be relied upon to tie laces independently. And three: being only four years old, Will had many years left to wear laced-up shoes. Lily knew that the same semi-argument was likely to occur yearly for at least three years to come.

* * *

Early in the afternoon, Lily started the walk to work, pushing Lizzie in the pram with Will half-walking and half-skipping alongside them. Sometimes he held her hand, or the side of the pram, but it was a marker of how much Lily had relaxed into parenthood, that she wasn't militant about this. The roads leading this way to the hospital weren't very busy, so she could let go of that little niggling, worrying part of her brain until the roads started to get busier.

Five minutes away from the hospital, when Lily had become adamant that Will _did_ hold the side of the pushchair, they met Connie, who was carrying the biggest bunch of helium-filled balloons that Lily had ever seen.

She smiled. "Thank you, Mrs Beauchamp, it was really kind of you to offer to collect those for us."

"Nonsense," Connie replied gently, flattered but mildly amused by Lily's impeccable politeness. "I'm sure you had more than enough on your plate this morning, what with your young man starting school next week. And I know Ethan will have had plenty on his mind this morning. It will all go swimmingly, with any luck. There's nothing left to worry about, I promise."

Lily looked down to Will's face, and grinned as she noticed his expression turn from wonder, to excitement, to curiosity. At Ethan's request, all of the balloons were white, but there was one on the outside of the bunch which was electric blue, printed all over with silver stars.

"That's a lot of balloons," he commented, elongating the 'oo' in 'balloons.' He gazed up at the balloons. "Are those all for Uncle Cal?"

"All of them," Connie said, her eyes twinkling. "Do you think I've got enough?" She winked at Lily but kept up the pretence for Will.

Will nodded enthusiastically and giggled. "I think so!" At last, he spotted that there was one balloon not the same as the rest. He pointed up at it. "That one's different. Is it for someone special?"

Lily smiled at no-one in particular. Ethan had promised he would make this day special for Will somehow, and this had obviously been his plan all along.

"Oh yes," Connie said, "very special."

They were quiet for a few paces, still making their way towards the hospital, before Connie stopped in her tracks. She bobbed down next to Will, her face serious.

"You know, William, I've been trying to think, all morning, of someone very special to hold that blue balloon with the stars on it. Do you think you'd be up to the job?"

His face lit up, and he nodded earnestly.

"Now, has Mummy explained to you what we're going to do with these balloons?"

"Yes, we're letting them go into the sky and then Uncle Caleb will see them and know that we're thinking about him," Will replied at once, sounding quite matter-of-fact.

"Very good," Connie replied, taken aback by how well this small boy was coping with the whole scenario. "So, when I give you the blue balloon, you must hold onto it very tightly and not let go, until you're told, okay?"

Lily wasn't certain that this would work, but Will hung off Connie's every syllable, and in the last few minutes approaching the hospital, he held that balloon's string so tightly that his little knuckles went white.

* * *

Outside the hospital at last, Lily tied the string of the blue balloon to the handle of the pushchair so that it would be unable to fly away too soon. Will was appalled that the trust he had been given by Mrs Beauchamp was not equalled by his mother, but Lily had good reason. Her point was illustrated when Ethan emerged from the front of the E.D. and Will took off at a bouncing run along the pavement, to be swept up into the air by his father. Had he still been holding his balloon, there would have been little hope for it.

Shortly, Ethan reached Lily, and balancing Will, who was happily snuggled against his scrubs, he used his free arm to hug her.

"Everything okay?" he asked, in place of a greeting.

"Everything's fine," Lily replied, tilting her head to kiss his cheek.

Ethan considered the enormous bunch of balloons, floored. He opened his mouth as if to say something to Connie, but no words came. He knew that there was one balloon here for each person who was coming out of the hospital to say goodbye to his brother. It was staggering really, but not altogether surprising.

* * *

Gradually, some people alone, some in twos and threes, even a few groups larger than that, the whole E.D. crowd walked out of the department to join Lily, Ethan and Connie where they stood. In amongst them there were other colleagues too: Zoe was there of course, chatting with Fletch, who had somehow missed that she was back in the country. Mr Hanssen came down towards the end, looking slightly awkward in the way that he towered over everybody present and was dressed two or three degrees more smartly. Lily had to smile a little when Arthur Digby came over and hugged Ethan without saying a word. Those two didn't have to speak sometimes, such was the strength of their friendship

"Is everyone here?" Connie asked Lily quietly, looking almost like a teacher in the way she was mentally head-counting.

Lily looked around, and was about to say that she thought everyone _was_ here, when she realised that this wasn't the case. "Let's just wait a few more minutes."

While Connie began distributing balloons, Lily pulled at Ethan's sleeve.

He turned around at once to face her. "What's the matter?" he asked.

"Dylan's not here, and I know he intended to be. I'm going to go and find him, okay?"

Ethan took a deep breath, looked at his shoes, and looked at his wife. "No, let me."

Lily's heart leapt in her chest. "Sure?"

"Very sure," Ethan affirmed, nodding. "Just… just make sure nothing happens while I'm gone."

Lily didn't have the heart to tell him that no-one would dream of letting off the balloons if he wasn't present. She squeezed his hand, then watched him weave through all the people outside.

* * *

The E.D., thankfully, was very quiet and nearly empty, running on skeleton staff just until the balloon release was over. It was odd to walk through the department and not be pulled in about twelve different directions all at once, not to be intercepted by someone vomiting on his shoes or collapsing out of a cubicle. It took Ethan hardly any time at all, to find Dylan in his office.

Even from a few paces away, it was pretty obvious what the consultant was doing. He was trying to be busy, trying to find a reason to not be out there with everyone else. It made Ethan uneasy to realise that _he_ was probably the reason for this. It felt intrusive to go in and change this situation, but he was very aware that this was his best and perhaps only chance to properly repair things, if not fully their friendship then at the very least he could salvage their working relationship. He put his hand on the door handle, and noticed Dylan look up in alarm.

Dylan felt vulnerable, being alone with Ethan, despite the ceasefire which had begun the day that Zoe had returned. This would be a perfect opportunity for the registrar to launch a few more poisoned remarks his way, without anyone to witness it. As Ethan entered the office, Dylan backed away from the door, leaning against the bookcase and folding his arms protectively across his chest. He knew that he must look ridiculous: why was he allowing himself to stand here and be made to feel afraid?

"We're about to let the balloons go, outside, do you want to come? Everyone's waiting," Ethan said gently.

"You don't want me out there," Dylan replied simply, looking at the floor.

Ethan wasn't sure how to respond, because right up until the moment that Dylan had stepped up as a witness in court, that had been completely true. He fumbled for something to say, settling eventually with: "No, I do."

"Let's just gloss over the unpleasantness of not knowing what to say. I ought to apologise to you, for what I said when I went crazy – wait," he corrected himself automatically, "I've had my wrists slapped on numerous occasions for using that word, so I'll try again. When I became… irrationally anxious, I said some things to you that I regret. I'm certain that you don't want or need to hear exactly what happened to your brother, not least now because Scott Ellisson is where he belongs, and this whole horrible business might at last be over." Dylan closed his eyes, distancing himself from he had said.

"You didn't go crazy," Ethan said firmly. "I'm not surprised you've 'had your wrists slapped' for saying that; you don't have to use such toxic language to describe your condition. And believe me, please, I do want you to come outside and be part of this. I was unforgivably, grotesquely unpleasant to you, and I am so sorry for that. It wasn't fair for me to take out my own lack of ability to cope on you. I didn't take the time to realise that you probably weren't coping too well with what happened, either." This admission was harder than apologising. For so long, Ethan had neglected to realise that he wasn't the only one grieving Cal's loss, and in time he had allowed in the idea that other people were entitled to feel as upset as him. He had thought that the most important person to validate had been Lily, but he had still been ignoring the fact that Dylan was the one to find Cal in his very last moments of life, and he alone had had to work out how to cope with his passing, knowing that he was the medical professional in charge of him, that night.

"I really did do my best for him." Dylan's voice was small; had there been the usual noise in the department, his sentence might have gone unheard.

"I don't doubt it for a second," Ethan replied. "Thank you, for trying. Cal wouldn't have wanted more than that. I can't want any more than that." He held his hand out for Dylan to shake, and made sure to meet his eyes exactly to show that he was being absolutely genuine.

Dylan took Ethan's hand and shook it. He nodded, a less emotional mirror of Ethan's acknowledgement of forgiveness which had led the younger man to put his other hand on the handshake too.

* * *

Lily was both amazed and relieved, when her husband and her best friend walked out of the hospital together. "Okay?" she asked, as they reached her.

"Okay," Ethan replied, untangling his balloon from the three that Lily was holding, and untying Will's from the handle of the pram.

"Okay," said Dylan, settling his hands on his hips and clearly trying to count just how many people had turned out.

Lily smiled. Each 'okay' meant something different. All of her ducks were in a line now. Everyone was just fine. She separated the two remaining balloon strings in her hand, and passed the second one to Dylan. "Now, aren't you glad you came out?" she asked, her voice dripping in the wit her friend was practically hospital-famous for. "I would have had to let go of two balloons, otherwise, and I would have looked preposterous."

He took the balloon from her, rolling his eyes.

Kneeling next to his son, Ethan whispered in his ear. "Do you want to go first? Quickly, let go of yours, and then everyone will have to follow you!"

Will beamed, and the blue balloon covered in stars went flying into the sky.

Nothing short of an ocean of white balloons followed.

Lily found herself completely choked up by this sight. This really was the last of everything awful that had happened. There was something so pure about the sight of white balloons floating upwards in a bright blue sky. It was such a calm day that they weren't been blown off-course at all, and as they got smaller and smaller, Lily hoped that if Cal really was watching, that he might find it entertaining, the fact that so many people had downed tools and walked straight out of work for something so seemingly simple. But it meant a lot, and she knew it. Right now, she needed a hug from Ethan, but he had Will held up on his shoulders, and the pair of them were trying to count how many balloons they could still see. She wouldn't disturb them: she appreciated how much he needed to stay positive by remaining distracted from what this symbolised. Still, Lily's shoulders shuddered with the effort of controlling her emotions.

As Lily reached up to wipe tears from her face, Zoe put her arm around the younger woman's shoulders. Lily relaxed into this half-hug, stepping backwards so that Ethan wouldn't hear her sniffing or her cries.

Then she felt a slightly awkward hand, reaching for hers, which was limp at her side.

"What on earth?" she asked, wondering if her mind was playing tricks on her.

"It'll be alright, you know," Dylan said kindly, squeezing her hand gently and then letting it fall.

"I know," Lily replied, sniffing and then exhaling deeply. "Have you suddenly gone soft?"

"If I have," Dylan replied, minus all of his usual gruff sarcasm, "then I blame it entirely on you."

"There are worse things to be responsible for," Zoe cut in, her hold on Lily's shoulders tightening momentarily before she let go, wandering forwards to where Ethan was standing. "Let me take William for a minute?" she said. "I think Lily needs you."

Ethan turned around, noticed Lily's tear-stained face and nodded. Will looked a bit put out, but Zoe knew exactly how to fix this.

"Remember me?" she asked, smiling. "You were very small, the last time I saw you – but a little bird tells me you're going to big school, next week!"

This distracted Will perfectly, and he began babbling excitedly.

Ethan took both of Lily's hands and kissed her on the forehead before pulling her into a hug. It was a hug the likes of which they had both missed so much when they had been on poor terms. "What's wrong?" he mumbled.

"Nothing," Lily insisted. "Really, it's fine. Just, the balloons, and Will going to school, and everything really _is_ fine. I think we're going to be alright, now."

* * *

It wasn't long before everyone started heading back into the hospital.

"Are you coming in, for a cup of tea or something?" Ethan asked Lily.

Lily shook her head. "No, it's okay, I'll just get these two home, and –"

"Don't be silly," Connie said, coming over to them. "I'm sure we can accommodate a few more bodies in there for a little while." She smiled, which Lily returned.

Ethan pushed the pram back towards the hospital. Lily rested one hand on top of his, happy to feel so wanted and needed. She glanced over to where Zoe and Dylan were walking, Will still talking to them animatedly about starting school. She couldn't help but laugh; perhaps Dylan really was mellowing, because he had somehow been convinced to give her son a piggy-back into the E.D. Hopefully Zoe would get a picture of this, because both of them looked so happy.

"Do you think we'll ever have a quiet life?" she asked Ethan blissfully.

"I wouldn't have thought so, but would you want it any other way?"

 _ **The End**_

* * *

 **I made it to the end of the fic! You made it to the end of the fic! Thank you so much, from the bottom of my heart, to all of you wonderful readers – and if you've been with me since the very start, then you are deserving of an extra special thank you. Thank you for reviewing, for enjoying, and for sticking with me through a frankly alarming word count :D**

 **Please leave me one last review, for old times' sake, maybe? xx**


End file.
